"Her husband's fortune is secured to her, then, by marriage contract?" inquired Pelletier, who had listened with rapidly increasing interest to his companion's enumeration.
"Every sou," replied the physician, solemnly.
The two words were worth an hour's oration, and with a person whom he esteemed intelligent, M. Magnian would not have added another. But, remembering that the Captain, as he had said a few hours before, was more richly endowed with shoulders than with brains, he did not fear to weigh a little heavily upon an idea from which he expected a magical result.
"For you," he jestingly resumed, "who have the bump of matrimony finely developed, here would be a capital match. Young, pretty, amiable, and a fortune of six hundred thousand francs. Though, to be sure, if you kill the husband, you can hardly expect to marry the widow."
Pelletier forced a laugh, which ill agreed with the thoughtful expression his physiognomy had assumed; then he changed the conversation. Certain that he had attained his end, the Doctor pleaded a professional visit, and left the Captain upon the boulevard, struck to the very heart by the six hundred thousand francs of the future widow.
Without halt or pause, and with the furious velocity of a wounded wild-boar, Pelletier went, without help of omnibus, from the Madeleine to the Bastille. When he reached the Porte St Martin, his determination was already taken.
"Without knowing it," he thought, "the Doctor has given me excellent advice. Fight Bouchereau! not so stupid. I should kill him; I am so unlucky! and then how could I reappear before Virginia? The little coquette views me with no indifferent eye; and luckily I have made love to her for the last three months, so that when the grand day comes, she cannot suppose I love her for her money. Kill Bouchereau! that would be absurd. Let him die in his bed, the dear man—I shall not prevent it. I shall have plenty of fighting with my rivals, as soon as his wife is a widow. Six hundred thousand francs! They'll throng about her like bees round a honey-pot. But let them take care; I'm first in the field, and not the man to let them walk over my body."
The following morning, long before the consultations had begun, the Captain strode into Magnian's reception room.
"Doctor," said he, with military frankness, "what you said yesterday about Bouchereau's illness, has made me seriously reflect. I cannot fight a man who has only six months to live. Suppose I wound him: a hurt, of which another would get well, might be mortal to one in his state of health; and then I should reproach myself, all my life, with having killed an old friend for a mere trifle. Did he tell you the cause of our quarrel?"
"No," replied the Doctor, who, in his capacity of negotiator, thought himself at liberty to lie.