“Don’t you think that’s good play?” said Leger.
“Besides,” said the inn-keeper, “the farm is really worth that to him.”
“Yes; Les Moulineaux brings in to-day six thousand francs in rental. I’ll take another lease of it at seven thousand five hundred for eighteen years. Therefore it is really an investment at more than two and a half per cent. The count can’t complain of that. In order not to involve Moreau, he is himself to propose me as tenant and farmer; it gives him a look of acting for his master’s interests by finding him nearly three per cent for his money, and a tenant who will pay well.”
“How much will Moreau make, in all?”
“Well, if the count gives him ten thousand francs for the transaction the matter will bring him fifty thousand,—and well-earned, too.”
“After all, the count, so they tell me, doesn’t like Presles. And then he is so rich, what does it matter what it costs him?” said the inn-keeper. “I have never seen him, myself.”
“Nor I,” said Pere Leger. “But he must be intending to live there, or why should he spend two hundred thousand francs in restoring the chateau? It is as fine now as the King’s own palace.”
“Well, well,” said the inn-keeper, “it was high time for Moreau to feather his nest.”
“Yes, for if the masters come there,” replied Leger, “they won’t keep their eyes in their pockets.”
The count lost not a word of this conversation, which was held in a low voice, but not in a whisper.