“A post-chaise!” said Brigitte, “that’s very lordly; why not take the diligence?”
“Diligences are so uncertain,” replied Cerizet; “you never know at what time they will get to a place. But you need not think about the expense, for I should otherwise go alone, and I am only too happy to offer you two seats in my carriage.”
To misers, small gains are often determining causes in great matters; after a little resistance “pro forma,” Brigitte ended by accepting the proposal, and three hours later the trio were on the road to Chartres, Cerizet having advised Thuillier not to let la Peyrade know of his absence, lest he might take some unfair advantage of it.
The next day, by five o’clock, the party had returned, and the brother and sister, who kept their opinions to themselves in presence of Cerizet, were both agreed that the purchase was a good one. They had found the soil of the best quality, the buildings in perfect repair, the cattle looked sound and healthy; in short, this idea of becoming the mistress of rural property seemed to Brigitte the final consecration of opulence.
“Minard,” she remarked, “has only a town-house and invested capital, whereas we shall have all that and a country-place besides; one can’t be really rich without it.”
Thuillier was not sufficiently under the charm of that dream—the realization of which was, in any case, quite distant—to forget, even for a moment, the “Echo de la Bievre” and his candidacy. No sooner had he reached home than he asked for the morning’s paper.
“It has not come,” said the “male domestic.”
“That’s a fine distribution, when even the owner of the paper is not served!” cried Thuillier, discontentedly.
Although it was nearly dinner-time, and after his journey he would much rather have taken a bath than rush to the rue Saint-Dominique, Thuillier ordered a cab and drove at once to the office of the “Echo.”
There a fresh disappointment met him. The paper “was made,” as they say, and all the employees had departed, even la Peyrade. As for Coffinet, who was not to be found at his post of office-boy, nor yet at his other post of porter, he had gone “of an errand,” his wife said, taking the key of the closet in which the remaining copies of the paper were locked up. Impossible, therefore, to procure the number which the unfortunate proprietor had come so far to fetch.