“You can buy a fine estate and a chaste wife with the money,” snapped this smooth personage, substituting curt brutality for honeyed prolixity.
The soldier was struck by the propositions the moment they flew at him small and solid, like bullets.
“I’ve no time,” said he, “to be running after women. But the estate I’ll certainly have, because you can get that for me without my troubling my head.”
“Is it a commission, then?” asked the other sharply.
“Of course. Do you think I speak for the sake of talking?”
And so Perrin received formal instructions to look out for a landed estate; and he was to receive a handsome commission as agent.
Now to settle this affair, and pocket a handsome percentage for himself, he had only to say “Beaurepaire.”
Well, he didn’t. Never mentioned the place; nor the fact that it was for sale.
Such are all our agents, when rival speculators. Mind that. Still it is a terrible thing to be so completely in the power of any man of the world, as from this hour Beaurepaire was in the power of Perrin the notary.