what they ran after was not God's people, but their capital."

He looked at the Baroness with an expression which said, "How clever I
am!"

"You know nothing of the devotion of every city man to his sacred
hoard!" he went on, after a pause. "Excuse me. Listen to me. Get this
well into your head.--You want two hundred thousand francs? No one can
produce the sum without selling some security. Now consider! To have two
hundred thousand francs in hard cash it would be needful to sell about
seven hundred thousand francs' worth of stock at three per cent. Well;
and then you would only get the money on the third day. That is the
quickest way. To persuade a man to part with a fortune--for two hundred
thousand francs is the whole fortune of many a man--he ought at least to
know where it is all going to, and for what purpose--"

"It is going, my dear kind Crevel, to save the lives of two men, one of
whom will die of grief and the other will kill himself! And to save me
too from going mad! Am I not a little mad already?"

"Not so mad!" said he, taking Madame Hulot round the knees; "old Crevel
has his price, since you thought of applying to him, my angel."

"They submit to have a man's arms round their knees, it would seem!"
thought the saintly woman, covering her face with her hands.

"Once you offered me a fortune!" said she, turning red.

"Ay, mother! but that was three years ago!" replied Crevel. "Well, you
are handsomer now than ever I saw you!" he went on, taking the Baroness'
arm and pressing it to his heart. "You have a good memory, my dear, by
Jove!--And now you see how wrong you were to be so prudish, for those
three hundred thousand francs that you refused so magnanimously are in
another woman's pocket. I loved you then, I love you still; but just
look back these three years.

"When I said to you, 'You shall be mine,' what object had I in view? I
meant to be revenged on that rascal Hulot. But your husband, my beauty,
found himself a mistress--a jewel of a woman, a pearl, a cunning hussy
then aged three-and-twenty, for she is six-and-twenty now. It struck
me as more amusing, more complete, more Louis XV., more Marechal de
Richelieu, more first-class altogether, to filch away that charmer, who,
in point of fact, never cared for Hulot, and who for these three years
has been madly in love with your humble servant."

As he spoke, Crevel, from whose hands the Baroness had released her
own, had resumed his favorite att