"All my horses--yes, baron. I have nineteen; and it will be very
strange if I don't get eight or ten thousand louis for the lot.
Domingo alone is worth more than forty thousand francs."

To talk of selling--of realizing something you possess--rings
ominously in people's ears. The person who talks of selling
proclaims his need of money--and often his approaching ruin. "It
will save you at least a hundred and fifty or sixty thousand
francs a year," observed the baron.

"Double it and you won't come up to the mark. Ah! my dear baron,
you have yet to learn that there is nothing so ruinous as a racing
stable. It's worse than gambling; and women, in comparison, are a
real economy. Ninette costs me less than Domingo, with his
jockey, his trainer, and his grooms. My manager declares that the
twenty-three thousand francs I won last year, cost me at least
fifty thousand."

Was he boasting, or was he speaking the truth? The baron was
engaged in a rapid calculation. "What does Valorsay spend a
year?" he was saying to himself. "Let us say two hundred and
fifty thousand francs for his stable; forty thousand francs for
Ninette Simplon; eighty thousand for his household expenses, and
at least thirty thousand for personal matters, travelling, and
play. All this amounts to something like four hundred and thirty
thousand francs a year. Does his income equal that sum? Certainly
not. Then he must have been living on the principal--he is
ruined."