“All my horses—yes, baron. I have nineteen; and it will be very strange if I don’t get eight or ten thousand louis for the lot. Domingo alone is worth more than forty thousand francs.”
To talk of selling—of realizing something you possess—rings ominously in people’s ears. The person who talks of selling proclaims his need of money—and often his approaching ruin. “It will save you at least a hundred and fifty or sixty thousand francs a year,” observed the baron.
“Double it and you won’t come up to the mark. Ah! my dear baron, you have yet to learn that there is nothing so ruinous as a racing stable. It’s worse than gambling; and women, in comparison, are a real economy. Ninette costs me less than Domingo, with his jockey, his trainer, and his grooms. My manager declares that the twenty-three thousand francs I won last year, cost me at least fifty thousand.”
Was he boasting, or was he speaking the truth? The baron was engaged in a rapid calculation. “What does Valorsay spend a year?” he was saying to himself. “Let us say two hundred and fifty thousand francs for his stable; forty thousand francs for Ninette Simplon; eighty thousand for his household expenses, and at least thirty thousand for personal matters, travelling, and play. All this amounts to something like four hundred and thirty thousand francs a year. Does his income equal that sum? Certainly not. Then he must have been living on the principal—he is ruined.”
Meanwhile the marquis gayly continued: “You see, I’m going to make a change in my mode of life. Ah! it surprises you! But one must make an end of it, sooner or later. I begin to find a bachelor life not so very pleasant after all; there is rheumatism in prospect, and my digestion is becoming impaired—in short, I feel that it is time for marriage, baron; and—I am about to marry.”
“You!”
“Yes, I. What, haven’t you heard of it, yet? It has been talked of at the club for three days or more.”
“No, this is the first intimation I have received of it. It is true, however, that I have not been to the club for three days. I have made a wager with Kami-Bey, you know—that rich Turk—and as our sittings are eight or ten hours long, we play in his apartments at the Grand Hotel. And so you are to be married,” the baron continued, after a slight pause. “Ah, well! I know one person who won’t be pleased.”
“Who, pray?”
“Ninette Simplon.”