“You’ll soon be twenty-eight years old, my good fellow,” said he, “and I don’t see that you are on the road to fortune. I wish you well, for after all you were once my son’s companion. Listen to me. If you can persuade that little Mirouet, who possesses in her own right forty thousand francs, to marry you, I will give you, as true as my name is Minoret, the means to buy a notary’s practice at Orleans.”
“No,” said Goupil, “that’s too far out of the way; but Montargis—”
“No,” said Minoret; “Sens.”
“Very good,—Sens,” replied the hideous clerk. “There’s an archbishop at Sens, and I don’t object to devotion; a little hypocrisy and there you are, on the way to fortune. Besides, the girl is pious, and she’ll succeed at Sens.”
“It is to be fully understood,” continued Minoret, “that I shall not pay the money till you marry my cousin, for whom I wish to provide, out of consideration for my deceased uncle.”
“Why not for me too?” said Goupil maliciously, instantly suspecting a secret motive in Minoret’s conduct. “Isn’t it through information you got from me that you make twenty-four thousand a year from that land, without a single enclosure, around the Chateau du Rouvre? The fields and the mill the other side of the Loing make sixteen thousand more. Come, old fellow, do you mean to play fair with me?”
“Yes.”
“If I wanted to show my teeth I could coax Massin to buy the Rouvre estate, park, gardens, preserves, and timber—”
“You’d better think twice before you do that,” said Zelie, suddenly intervening.
“If I choose,” said Goupil, giving her a viperish look; “Massin would buy the whole for two hundred thousand francs.”