about to marry the daughter of my old cashier,--a
very handsome girl, but without a sou. She ought to have a dowry."

"Sir!"

"Let us show our hands. I am in a critical position: you know it,
and you are trying to take advantage of it. Very well: we can still
come to an understanding. What would you say, if I were to give to
Mlle. Gilberte the dowry I intended for my daughter?"

All M. de Tregars' blood rushed to his face.

"Ah, not another word!" he exclaimed with a gesture of unprecedented
violence. But, controlling himself almost at once,

"I demand," he added, "my father's fortune. I demand that you
should restore to the Mutual Credit Company the twelve millions
which have been abstracted."

"And if not?"

"Then I shall apply to the courts."

They remained for a moment face to face, looking into each other's
eyes. Then,

"What have you decided?" asked M. de Tregars.

Without perhaps, suspecting that his offer was a new insult,

"I will go as far as fifteen hundred thousand francs," replied M.
de Thaller, "and I pay cash."

"Is that your last word?"

"It is."

"If I enter a complaint, with the proofs in my hands,
you are lost."

"We'll see about that."

To insist further would have been puerile.

"Very well, we'll see, then," said M. de Tregars. But as he
walked out and got into his cab, which had been waiting for him at
the door, he could not help wondering what gave the Baron de
Thaller so much assurance, and whether he was not mistaken in his
conjectures.

It was nearly eight o'clock, and Maxence, Mme. Favoral and Mlle.
Gilberte must have been waiting for him with a feverish impatience;
but he had eaten nothing since morning, and he stopped in front of
one of the restaurants of the Boulevard.

He had just ordered his dinner, when a gentleman of a certain age,
but active and vigorous still, of military bearing, wearing a
mustache, and a tan-colored ribbon at his buttonhole, came to take
a seat at the adjoining table.

In less than fifteen minutes M. de Tregars had despatched a bowl
of soup and a slice of beef, and was hastening out, when his foot
struck his neighbor's foot, without his being able to understand
how it had happened.

Though fully convinced that it was not his fault, he hastened to
excuse himself. But the other began to talk angrily, and so loud,
that everybody turned around.

Vexed as he was, Marius renewed his apologies.

But the other, like those cowards w