ntly the banker could only take the scantiest
breakfast--that of a dyspeptic. In the midst of such luxury, and under
the eye of a well-paid butler, M. Godefroy could only eat a couple of
boiled eggs and nibble a little mutton chop. The man of money trifled
with dessert--took only a crumb of Roquefort--not more than two cents'
worth. Then the door opened and an overdressed but charming little
child--young Raoul, four years old--the son of the company director,
entered the room, accompanied by his German nursery governess.

This event occurred every day at the same hour--a quarter to eleven,
precisely, while the carriage which was to take the banker to the Bourse
was awaiting the gentleman who had only a quarter of an hour to give to
paternal sentiment. It was not that he did not love his son. He did love
him--nay, he adored him, in his own particular way. But then, you know,
business _is_ business.

At the age of forty-two, when already worldly-wise and _blase_, he
had fancied himself in love with the daughter of one of his club
friends--Marquis de Neufontaine, an old rascal--a nobleman, but one
whose card-playing was more than open to suspicion, and who would have
been expelled from the club more than once but for the influence of M.
Godefroy, The nobleman was only too happy to become the father-in-law of
a man who would pay his debts, and without any scruples he handed over
his daughter--a simple and ingenuous child of seventeen, who was taken
from a convent to be married--to the worldly banker. The girl was
certainly sweet and pretty, but she had no dowry except numerous
aristocratic prejudices and romantic illusions, and her father thought
he was fortunate in getting rid of her on such favorable terms. M.
Godefroy, who was the son of an avowed old miser of Andelys, had always
remained a man of the people, and intensely vulgar. In spite of his
improved circumstances, he had not improved. His entire lack of tact and
refinement was painful to his young wife, whose tenderest feelings
he ruthlessly and thoughtlessly trampled upon. Things were looking
unpromising, when, happily for her, Madame Godefroy died in giving birth
to her firstborn. When he spoke of his deceased wife, the banker waxed
poetical, although had she lived they would have been divorced in six
months. His son he loved dearly for several reasons--first, because
the child was an only son; secondly, because he was a scion of two such
houses as Godefroy and