The young man took the letter, and in spite of the cold, tried to
identify the writing by the gleam of a dull lamp fast dying out. "From
my father!" he exclaimed, as he took his bedroom candle, which the
porter at last had lighted. And he ran up to his room to read the
following epistle:--

"Set off by the next mail; and if you can get here soon enough,
your fortune is made. Mademoiselle Angelique Bontems has lost her
sister; she is now an only child; and, as we know, she does not
hate you. Madame Bontems can now leave her about forty thousand
francs a year, besides whatever she may give her when she marries.
I have prepared the way.

"Our friends will wonder to see a family of old nobility allying
itself to the Bontems; old Bontems was a red republican of the
deepest dye, owning large quantities of the nationalized land,
that he bought for a mere song. But he held nothing but convent
lands, and the monks will not come back; and then, as you have
already so far derogated as to become a lawyer, I cannot see why
we should shrink from a further concession to the prevalent ideas.
The girl will have three hundred thousand francs; I can give you a
hundred thousand; your mother's property must be worth fifty
thousand crowns, more or less; so if you choose to take a
judgeship, my dear son, you are quite in a position to become a
senator as much as any other man. My brother-in-law the Councillor
of State will not indeed lend you a helping-hand; still, as he is
not married, his property will some day be yours, and if you are
not senator by your own efforts, you will get it through him. Then
you will be perched high enough to look on at events. Farewell.