"Well," said the young fellow, "the money's welcome, for I left my wife
with just thirty sous this morning."

It was already more than six o'clock when he found himself outside the
superb house which the Seguin du Hordel family occupied in the Avenue
d'Antin. Seguin's grandfather had been a mere tiller of the soil at
Janville. Later on, his father, as a contractor for the army, had made a
considerable fortune. And he, son of a parvenu, led the life of a rich,
elegant idler. He was a member of the leading clubs, and, while
passionately fond of horses, affected also a taste for art and
literature, going for fashion's sake to extreme opinions. He had proudly
married an almost portionless girl of a very ancient aristocratic race,
the last of the Vaugelades, whose blood was poor and whose mind was
narrow. Her mother, an ardent Catholic, had only succeeded in making of
her one who, while following religious practices, was eager for the joys
of the world. Seguin, since his marriage, had likewise practised
religion, because it was fashionable to do so. His peasant grandfather
had had ten children; his father, the army contractor, had been content
with six; and he himself had two, a boy and a girl, and deemed even that
number more than was right.

One part of Seguin's fortune consisted of an estate of some twelve
hundred acres--woods and heaths--above Janville, which his father had
purchased with some of his large gains after retiring from business. The
old man's long-caressed dream had been to return in triumph to his native
village, whence he had started quite poor, and he was on the point of
there building himself a princely residence in the midst of a vast park
when death snatched him away. Almost the whole of this estate had come to
Seguin in his share of the paternal inheritance, and he had turned the