"What a way you have of saying that, little sister! Pray what do you mean by it?"
"I mean that you are to go to my house at Libourne before it is pillaged; there you will find in the secret cupboard behind my Venetian mirror—"
"In the secret cupboard?" queried Cauvignac.
"Yes, you know it well, do you not?" said Nanon, with a feeble smile; "you took two hundred pistoles from it last month, didn't you?"
"Nanon, do me the justice to admit that I might have taken more had I wished, for the cupboard was filled with gold; but I took no more than the sum that I actually needed."
"That is true," said Nanon, "and I am only too glad to bear witness to it, if it excuses you in your own eyes."
Cauvignac blushed and hung his head.
"Mon Dieu!" said Nanon, "think no more about it; you know that I forgive you."
"What proof have I?"
"This: you will go to Libourne, you will open the cupboard, and you will find there all of my fortune that I was able to turn into money,—twenty thousand crowns in gold."