“But, monsieur——”
“I cannot listen,” said Beausire.
The chancellor took his relation by the shoulder, and pushed him out, saying, “You have spoiled your fortune.”
“Mon Dieu! how susceptible these foreigners are!”
“When one is called Souza, and has nine hundred thousand francs a year, one has a right to be anything,” said Ducorneau.
“Ah!” sighed Bossange, “I told you, Bœhmer, you were too stiff about it.”
“Well,” replied the obstinate German, “at least, if we do not get his money, he will not get our necklace.”
Ducorneau laughed. “You do not understand either a Portuguese or an ambassador, bourgeois that you are. I will tell you what they are: one ambassador, M. de Potemkin, bought every year for his queen, on the first of January, a basket of cherries which cost one hundred thousand crowns—one thousand francs a cherry. Well, M. de Souza will buy up the mines of Brazil till he finds a diamond as big as all yours put together. If it cost him twenty years of his income, what does he care?—he has no children.”
And he was going to shut the door, when Bossange said:
“Arrange this affair, and you shall have——”