on his return he seemed satisfied and quiet. Without giving up
his situation at the Mutual Credit, he was about, he stated, to
associate himself with the Messrs. Jottras, M. Saint Pavin of
"The Financial Pilot," and M. Costeclar, to undertake the
construction of a foreign railway.

M. Costeclar was at the head of this enterprise, the enormous
profits of which were so certain and so clear; that they could be
figured in advance.

And whilst on this same subject,

"You were very wrong," he said to Mlle. Gilberte, "not to make haste
and marry Costeclar when he was willing to have you. You will never
find another such match,--a man who, before ten years, will be a
financial power."

The very name of M. Costeclar had the effect of irritating the young
girl.

"I thought you had fallen out?" she said to her father.

"So we had," he replied with some embarrassment, "because he has
never been willing to tell me why he had withdrawn; but people
always make up again when they have interests in common."

Formerly, before the war, M. Favoral would certainly never have
condescended to enter into all these details. But he was becoming
almost communicative. Mlle. Gilberte, who was observing him with
interested attention, fancied she could see that he was yielding
to that necessity of expansion, more powerful than the will itself,
which besets the man who carries within him a weighty secret.

Whilst for twenty years he had, so to speak, never breathed a word
on the subject of the Thaller family, now he was continually
speaking of them. He told his Saturday friends all about the
princely style of the baron, the number of his servants and horses,
the color of his liveries, the parties that he gave, what he spent
for pictures and objects of art, and even the very names of his
mistresses; for the baron had too much respect for himself not to
lay every year a few thousand napoleons at the feet of some young
lady sufficiently conspicuous to be mentioned in the society
newspapers.

M. Favoral confessed that he did not approve the baron; but it was
with a sort of bitter hatred that he spoke of the baroness. It was
impossible, he affirmed to his guests, to estimate even approximately
the fabulous sums squandered by her, scattered, thrown to the four
winds. For she was not prodigal, she was prodigality itself,--that
idiotic, absurd, unconscious prodigality which melts a fortune in a
turn of the hand; which cannot even obtain fr