"Are you telling me the truth, Boudoux?"
"Before God, I am, M. Dumas; that rascally No. 9 turned up: you can go and see for yourself on the list; it is the third."
There was nothing astonishing about this: had we not struck a vein of good fortune?
My mother and I went to Madame Chapuis. We were even better off than we supposed. Boudoux had calculated upon the number coming out along with others; I had put my thirty sous on the single item: the result of this difference was that my thirty sous brought me in a hundred and fifty francs, instead of seventy-three.
I have never rightly understood the reason why Madame Chapuis doubled the amount, which was paid me, I remember, in crowns of six livres, plus the necessary smaller change; but when I saw the crowns, when I was allowed to carry them off, I did not ask for further explanation. I was the possessor of the sum of a hundred and eighty-five francs! I had never had so much money in my pocket. Therefore, as all these six-livre crowns made a great chinking and took up a lot of room, my mother changed them for me into gold.
Oh! what a fine thing gold is, however much decried, when it is the realisation of the dearest hopes in life! Those nine gold coins were little enough; but nevertheless, at that moment, they were of more value in my eyes than the thousands of similar pieces which have passed through my hands since; and which, after the fashion of Jupiter, I have showered upon that most costly of all mistresses men call Fancy. So I cost my mother nothing, not even for the carriage of my furniture, for which I paid the carrier in advance, bargaining with him for the sum of twenty francs to bring them to Paris, to the door of the hôtel des Vieux-Augustins, to be removed from there when I should have chosen my lodgings. They were to be delivered on the Monday night.
At last the hour of parting came. The whole town assisted at my departure. It was for all the world as though one of the navigators of the Middle Ages were leaving to discover an unknown land, and the wishes and the cheering of his compatriots were giving him a send-off across the seas.
In truth, those dear good friends realised, with their simple and kindly instinct, that I was embarking on an ocean quite as stormy and uncertain as that which, according to the blind soothsayer, surrounded the shield of Achilles.