"You need not trouble yourself about anything. I will attend to the necessary formalities. How would you like to call yourself by your wife's name Sicardot?"
Aristide glanced up at the ceiling, repeating the name, and listening to the sound of the syllables.
"Sicardot—Aristide Sicardot—no, on my word, it's clownish and has a suggestion of bankruptcy about it."
"Think of something better then," said Eugène.
"I would prefer Sicard without the ot," resumed the other after a pause; "Aristide Sicard—that isn't bad, is it? perhaps a bit jaunty—"
He stood thinking a few moments longer, and then triumphantly exclaimed:
"I've got it, I've found it at last! Saccard, Aristide Saccard! with a double c. Eh! there's money in such a name as that; it has a sound like the counting out of five franc pieces."
Eugène was rather brutal in his jokes. He dismissed his brother, saying to him with a smile:
"Yes, a name that will make you a convict or a millionaire."
A few days later Aristide Saccard found himself at the Hôtel de Ville. He there learnt that his brother must have commanded considerable influence to get him appointed without the customary examinations.