her will seemed worn out. She felt despondencies and wearinesses until
then unknown. Work tired her. She did not venture down to the offices;
she talked of giving up business, which was a bad sign. She longed for
country air. Were they not rich enough? With their simple tastes so
much money was unnecessary. In fact, they had no wants. They would go
to some pretty estate in the suburbs of Paris, live there and plant
cabbages. Why work? they had no children.

Michel agreed to these schemes. For a long time he had wished for
repose. Often he had feared that his wife's ambition would lead them too
far. But now, since she stopped of her own accord, it was all for the
best.

At this juncture their solicitor informed them that, near to their works,
the Cernay estate was to be put up for sale. Very often, when going from
Jouy to the mills, Madame Desvarennes had noticed the chateau, the slate
roofs of the turrets of which rose gracefully from a mass of deep
verdure. The Count de Cernay, the last representative of a noble race,
had just died of consumption, brought on by reckless living, leaving
nothing behind him but debts and a little girl two years old. Her
mother, an Italian singer and his mistress, had left him one morning
without troubling herself about the child. Everything was to be sold,
by order of the Court.

Some most lamentable incidents had saddened the Count's last hours. The
bailiffs had entered the house with the doctor when he came to pay his
last call, and the notices of the sale were all but posted up before the
funeral was over. Jeanne, the orphan, scared amid the troubles of this
wretched end, seeing unknown men walking into the reception-rooms with
their hats on, hearing strangers speaking loudly and with arrogance, had