proved value to eight hundred thousand francs,
while pocketing twelve hundred thousand. He did not announce his return;
but while his wife was enduring unspeakable woes, he was building farms,
digging trenches, and ploughing rough ground with a courage that ranked
him among the most remarkable agriculturists of the province.

The four hundred thousand francs he had filched from his wife were spent
in three years on this undertaking, and the estate of Anzy was expected
to return seventy-two thousand francs a year of net profits after the
taxes were paid. The eight hundred thousand he invested at four and a
half per cent in the funds, buying at eighty francs, at the time of the
financial crisis brought about by the Ministry of the First of March,
as it was called. By thus securing to his wife an income of forty-eight
thousand francs he considered himself no longer in her debt. Could he
not restore the odd twelve hundred thousand as soon as the four and a
half per cents had risen above a hundred? He was now the greatest man
in Sancerre, with the exception of one--the richest proprietor in
France--whose rival he considered himself. He saw himself with an income
of a hundred and forty thousand francs, of which ninety thousand formed
the revenue from the lands he had entailed. Having calculated that
besides this net income he paid ten thousand francs in taxes, three
thousand in working expenses, ten thousand to his wife, and twelve
hundred to his mother-in-law, he would say in the literary circles of
Sancerre:

"I am reputed miserly, and said to spend nothing; but my outlay amounts
to twenty-six thousand five hundred francs a year. And I have still to
pay for the education of my two children! I daresay it is not a pleasing
fact to the Milauds of Nevers, but the second house of La Baudraye may
yet have as noble a center as the first.--I shall most likely go to
Paris and petition the King of the French to grant me the title of
Count--Monsieur Roy is a Count--and my wife would be pleased to be
Madame la Comtesse."

And this was said with such splendid coolness that no one would have
dared to laugh at the little man. Only Monsieur Boirouge, the Presiding
Judge, remarked:

"In your place, I should not be happy unless I had a daughter."

"Well, I shall go to Paris before long----" said the Baron.

In the early part of 1842 Madame de la Baudraye, feeling that she was to
Lousteau no more than a reserve in the background, had ag