ago ceased to verify. She brought it to him
now and insisted upon his looking over it. He excused himself, saying
that it was all right.

"The thing is, monsieur," she said, "that this time I have been able to
put some money aside. Yes, three hundred francs. Here they are."

He looked at her in amazement. Generally she just made both ends meet.
By what miracle of stinginess had she been able to save such a sum?

"Ah! my poor Martine," he said at last, laughing, "that is the reason,
then, that we have been eating so many potatoes of late. You are a pearl
of economy, but indeed you must treat us a little better in the future."

This discreet reproach wounded her so profoundly that she allowed
herself at last to say:

"Well, monsieur, when there is so much extravagance on the one hand, it
is well to be prudent on the other."

He understood the allusion, but instead of being angry, he was amused by
the lesson.

"Ah, ah! it is you who are examining my accounts! But you know very
well, Martine, that I, too, have my savings laid by."

He alluded to the money which he still received occasionally from his
patients, and which he threw into a drawer of his writing-desk. For more
than sixteen years past he had put into this drawer every year about
four thousand francs, which would have amounted to a little fortune
if he had not taken from it, from day to day, without counting them,
considerable sums for his experiments and his whims. All the money for
the presents came out of this drawer, which he now opened continually.
He thought that it would never be empty; he had been so accustomed to
take from it whatever he required that it had never occurred to him to
fear that he would ever come to the bottom of it.

"One may very well have a little enjoyment out of one's savings," he
said gayly. "Since it is you who go to the notary's, Martine, you are
not ignorant that I have my income apart."

Then she said, with the colorless voice of the miser who is haunted by
the dread of an impending disaster:

"And what would you do if you hadn't it?"

Pascal looked at her in astonishment, and contented himself with
answering with a shrug, for the possibility of such a misfortune had
never even entered his mind. He fancied that avarice was turning her
brain, and he laughed over the incident that evening with Clotilde.

In Plassans, too, the presents were the cause of endless gossip. The
rumor of what was going on at La Souleiade, t