As a matter of policy Severine encouraged her husband to continue his
trade in hosiery, which any other man but himself would have long
renounced; and she sent him to Paris, and about the country, on
business connected with it. Up to the year 1830 Phileas, who was thus
enabled to exercise his bump of "acquisitiveness," earned every year a
sum equivalent to his expenses. The interest on the property of
Monsieur and Madame Beauvisage, being capitalized for the last fifteen
years by Grevin's intelligent care, became, by 1830, a round sum of
half a million francs. That sum was, in fact, Cecile's _dot_, which
the old notary then invested in the Three-per-cents at fifty,
producing a safe income of thirty thousand a year.

After 1830 Beauvisage sold his business in hosiery to Jean Violette,
one of his agents (grandson of one of the chief witnesses for the
prosecution in the Simeuse trial), the proceeds of which amounted to
three hundred thousand francs. Monsieur and Madame Beauvisage had also
in prospect their double inheritance from old Grevin on one side, and
the old farmer's wife Beauvisage on the other. Great provincial
fortunes are usually the product of time multiplied by economy. Thirty
years of old age make capital.

In giving to Cecile-Renee a _dot_ of fifty thousand francs a year, her
parents still reserved for themselves the two inheritances, thirty
thousand a year on the Grand Livre, and their house in Arcis.

If the Marquise de Cinq-Cygne were only dead, Cecile might assuredly
marry the young marquis; but the health of that great lady, who was
still vigorous and almost beautiful at sixty years of age, precluded
all hope of such a marriage if it even entered the minds of Grevin and