January, 1815, the old man actually arrived, installing himself
quietly, almost slyly, with a little girl about ten months old, and a
nurse.

"The child can't be his daughter," said the terrified heirs; "he is
seventy-one years old."

"Whoever she is," remarked Madame Massin, "she'll give us plenty of
tintouin" (a word peculiar to Nemours, meaning uneasiness, anxiety, or
more literally, tingling in the ears).

The doctor received his great-niece on the mother's side somewhat
coldly; her husband had just bought the place of clerk of the court,
and the pair began at once to tell him of their difficulties. Neither
Massin nor his wife were rich. Massin's father, a locksmith at
Montargis, had been obliged to compromise with his creditors, and was
now, at sixty-seven years of age, working like a young man, and had
nothing to leave behind him. Madame Massin's father, Levrault-Minoret,
had just died at Montereau after the battle, in despair at seeing his
farm burned, his fields ruined, his cattle slaughtered.

"We'll get nothing out of your great-uncle," said Massin to his wife,
now pregnant with her second child, after the interview.

The doctor, however, gave them privately ten thousand francs, with
which Massin, who was a great friend of the notary and of the sheriff,
began the business of money-lending, and carried matters so briskly
with the peasantry that by the time of which we are now writing Goupil
knew him to hold at least eighty thousand francs on their property.