"Thanks, my lord. I know I can count on your word. To come back to Pierre Labarre, I think we should hunt him up as soon as possible."
"I am ready; where does he live?"
"At Vagney, about three hours distant."
"It is now three o'clock," said the marquis, pulling out his watch. "If we start now, we will be able to return to-night."
"Then I shall order horses at once!"
Simon went away, and the marquis remained behind thinking. No matter where he looked, the past, present and future were alike blue to him.
The old marquis had died in 1817, and the vicomte had immediately set about to have the death of his brother, which had taken place at Leigoutte in 1814, confirmed. Both the wife and the children of Jules Fougere had disappeared since that catastrophe, and so the Vicomte of Talizac, now Marquis of Fougereuse, claimed possession of his father's estate.
But, strange to say, the legacy was far less than the vicomte and Madeleine had expected, and, as they both had contracted big debts on the strength of it, nothing was left to them but to sell a portion of the grounds.
Had the marquis and his wife not lived so extravagantly they would not have tumbled from one difficulty into the other, but the desire to cut a figure in the Faubourg St. Germain consumed vast sums, and what the parents left over, the son gambled away and dissipated.
Petted and spoiled by his mother, the Vicomte de Talizac was a fast youth before he had attained his fifteenth year. No greater pleasure could be given his mother than to tell her, that her son was the leader of the jeunesse dorée. He understood how to let the money fly, and when the marquis, alarmed at his son's extravagance, reproached his wife, the latter cut him short by saying: