"Calm yourself, Captain d'Haumont, seeing that your wife's fortune is not in question, and we are not asking for any part of it," returned M. de Saynthine.
"All the same, allow me to say," broke in the Joker, "that Captain d'Haumont is wrong in saying that his wife's property does not belong to him. It belongs to him as much as it belongs to her. He can dispose of it in its entirety, because Captain and Madame d'Haumont were married under the law of community of property between husband and wife. Captain d'Haumont wanted this community of property converted into the law of acquisition whereby the property belongs to the husband and wife jointly, but Madame d'Haumont, with an unselfishness which one cannot too highly praise, insisted on the former course, and M. de la Boulays himself had to give way to her. Moreover, he did so all the more readily inasmuch as he knew that he was dealing with a perfectly honest man who would know how to manage with care and economy their mutual interests."
"You are wasting words," growled the Burglar. "Captain d'Haumont has got to make up his mind. Is it to be yes or no?"
"I am prepared to give you everything that belongs to me," said Captain d'Haumont. The three men at these words were quivering with delight when he added: "Unfortunately for your expectations, which I consider excessive, I do not possess more than one hundred and fifty thousand francs."
Slightly nonplussed by this declaration, the three confederates burst into laughter.
"What a good joke!" jeered the Burglar. "Who's going to believe that humbug?"
M. de Saynthine intervened:
"I thought that I said what I had to say with sufficient clearness," he observed. "Two million francs for us, and honor, fame, happiness, security, love and one million francs for you."
"One million, one hundred and seventy-seven thousand, eight hundred francs," corrected the Joker. "It strikes me that with the share we are leaving you, you'll have nothing to complain of."
"We are much too generous," declared Monsieur Toulouse, who was beginning to show irritation and struck the table with his fist. "It's obvious that we shall have to resort to extreme measures."