s sold out some of his
investments already, and to-morrow you will receive from him a bill of
exchange for one hundred and fifty thousand francs."

"I hope I may. If that be so, cannot your friend settle your
difficulties here? You could live quietly at Lanstrac for five or six
years on your wife's income, and so recover yourself."

"No assignment or economy on my part could pay off fifteen hundred
thousand francs of debt, in which my wife is involved to the amount of
five hundred and fifty thousand."

"You cannot mean to say that in four years you have incurred a million
and a half of debt?"

"Nothing is more certain, Mathias. Did I not give those diamonds to my
wife? Did I not spend the hundred and fifty thousand I received from the
sale of Madame Evangelista's house, in the arrangement of my house in
Paris? Was I not forced to use other money for the first payments on
that property demanded by the marriage contract? I was even forced to
sell out Natalie's forty thousand a year in the Funds to complete the
purchase of Auzac and Saint-Froult. We sold at eighty-seven, therefore I
became in debt for over two hundred thousand francs within a month after
my marriage. That left us only sixty-seven thousand francs a year; but
we spent fully three times as much every year. Add all that up, together
with rates of interest to usurers, and you will soon find a million."

"Br-r-r!" exclaimed the old notary. "Go on. What next?"

"Well, I wanted, in the first place, to complete for my wife that set
of jewels of which she had the pearl necklace clasped by the family
diamond, the 'Discreto,' and her mother's ear-rings. I paid a hundred
thousand francs for a coronet of diamond wheat-ears. There's eleven
hundred thousand. And now I find I owe the fortune of my wife, which
amounts to three hundred and sixty-six thousand francs of her 'dot.'"

"But," said Mathias, "if Madame la comtesse had given up her diamonds
and you had pledged your income you could have pacified your creditors
and have paid them off in time."

"When a man is down, Mathias, when his property is covered with
mortgages, when his wife's claims take precedence of his creditors', and
when that man has notes out for a hundred thousand francs which he must
pay (and I hope I can do so out of the increased value of my property
here), what you propose is not possible."

"This is dreadful!" cried Mathias; "would you sell Belle-Rose with the
vintage of 1825 still in th