y marrying her.

The first thing I did was to give up Little Poland. I then drew the
twenty-four thousand francs which were my surety for keeping a lottery
office in the Rue St. Denis. Thus I got rid of my ridiculous office of
lottery receiver, and after getting my clerk married I handed over the
office to him; in short, I made his fortune. A friend of his wife's was
his surety; such things often happen.

I did not like to leave Madame d'Urfe involved in a troublesome suit with
Gamier, so I went to Versailles to see the Abbe de la Ville, a great
friend of his, and begged him to induce Gamier to make a composition.

The abbe saw that his friend was in the wrong, and so was all the more
willing to help me; and a few days afterwards he wrote to me to go and
see him, assuring me that I should find him inclined to arrange matters
in a friendly manner.

Gamier was at Ruelle, where he had a house which cost him four hundred
thousand francs--a fine estate for a man who had made his money as an
army contractor during the last war. He was rich, but he was so
unfortunate as to be still fond of women at the age of seventy, while his
impotence debarred him from the proper enjoyment of their society. I
found him in company with three young ladies, all of whom were pretty,
and (as I heard afterwards) of good families; but they were poor, and
their necessities forced them to submit to a disgusting intercourse with
the old profligate. I stayed to dinner and admired the propriety and
modesty of their behaviour in spite of the humiliation which accompanies
poverty. After dinner, Gamier went to sleep, and left me to entertain
these girls whom I would willingly have rescued from their unfortunate
situation if I had been able. After Gamier woke, we went into his study
to talk over our business.

At first he maintained his claim tenaciously, and seemed unwilling to
yield an inch; but when I told him that I was leaving Paris in a few
days, he saw that as he could not keep me, Madame d'Urfe might take the
suit over and carry it on to infinity, and that he might lose it at last.
That made him think it over, and he asked me to stay in his house for the
night. The next day, after breakfast, he said,--

"I have made up my mind: I will have twenty-five thousand francs, or keep
the matter before the courts till my dying day."

I answered that he would find the sum in the hands of Madame d'Urfe's
solicitor, and that he could receive it as soon