"Why didn't you speak to me about it before I went to Paris, mother?"
said Sauviat. "I shall have to go back there."

Jerome-Baptiste Sauviat, a man in whose eyes money seemed to
constitute the whole of happiness, who knew nothing of love, and had
never seen in marriage anything but the means of transmitting property
to another self, had long sworn to marry Veronique to some rich
bourgeois,--so long, in fact, that the idea had assumed in his brain
the characteristics of a hobby. His neighbor, the hat-maker, who
possessed about two thousand francs a year, had already asked, on
behalf of his son, to whom he proposed to give up his hat-making
establishment, the hand of a girl so well known in the neighborhood
for her exemplary conduct and Christian principles. Sauviat had
politely refused, without saying anything to Veronique. The day after
the vicar--a very important personage in the eyes of the Sauviat
household--had mentioned the necessary of marrying Veronique, whose
confessor he was, the old man shaved and dressed himself as for a
fete-day, and went out without saying a word to his wife or daughter;
both knew very well, however, that the father was in search of a
son-in-law. Old Sauviat went to Monsieur Graslin.

Monsieur Graslin, a rich banker in Limoges, had, like Sauviat himself,
started from Auvergne without a penny; he came to Limoges to be a
porter, found a place as an office-boy in a financial house, and
there, like many other financiers, he made his way by dint of economy,
and also through fortunate circumstances. Cashier at twenty-five years
of age, partner ten years later, in the firm of Perret and Grossetete,
he ended by finding himself the head of the house, after buying out
the senior partners, both of whom retired into the country, leaving
him their funds to manage in the business at a low interest.