“Such a fine estate!”
“It will sell to-day for over two millions.”
“The chateau alone must have cost that,” remarked Monsieur de Troisville.
“One of the best properties in a circumference of sixty miles,” said the sub-prefect; “but you can find a better near Paris.”
“How much income does one get from two millions?” asked the countess.
“Now-a-days, about eighty thousand francs,” replied Blondet.
“Les Aigues does not bring in, all told, more than thirty thousand,” said the countess; “and lately you have been at such immense expenses,—you have surrounded the woods this year with ditches.”
“You could get,” added Blondet, “a royal chateau for four hundred thousand francs near Paris. In these days people buy the follies of others.”
“I thought you cared for Les Aigues!” said the count to his wife.
“Don’t you feel that I care a thousand times more for your life?” she replied. “Besides, ever since the death of my poor Olympe and Michaud’s murder the country is odious to me; all the faces I meet seem to wear a treacherous or threatening expression.”