"Now about the other friends of whom you ask for news.

"Wonders will never cease. Louvier and Duplessis are no longer deadly
rivals. They have become sworn friends, and are meditating a great
speculation in common, to commence as soon as the Prussian debt is paid
off. Victor de Mauleon brought about this reconciliation in a single
interview during the brief interregnum between the Peace and the _Guerre
des Communeaux_. You know how sternly Louvier was bent upon seizing
Alain de Rochebriant's estates. Can you conceive the true cause? Can
you imagine it possible that a hardened money-maker like Louvier should
ever allow himself to be actuated, one way or the other, by the romance
of a sentimental wrong? Yet so it was. It seems that many years ago he
was desperately in love with a girl who disappeared from his life, and
whom he believed to have been seduced by the late Marquis de Rochebriant.
It was in revenge for this supposed crime that he had made himself the
principal mortgagee of the late Marquis; and, visiting the sins of the
father on the son, had, under the infernal disguise of friendly interest,
made himself sole mortgagee to Alain, upon terms apparently the most
generous. The demon soon showed his _griffe_, and was about to
foreclose, when Duplessis came to Alain's relief; and Rochebriant was to
be Valerie's dot on her marriage with Alain. The Prussian war, of
course, suspended all such plans, pecuniary and matrimonial. Duplessis,
whose resources were terribly crippled by the war, attempted operations
in London with a view of raising the sum necessary to pay off the
mortgage;--found himself strangely frustrated and baffled. Louvier was
in London, and defeated his rival's agent in every speculation. It
became impossible for Duplessis to redeem the mortgage. The two men came
to Paris with the peace. Louvier determined both to seize the Breton
lands and to complete the ruin of Duplessis, when he learned from De
Mauleon that he had spent half his life in a baseless illusion; that