the same price you paid for them, where would your profit come
in?"

"I would pay for them in assignats; their owners would pay me in gold."

Vauquelas uttered these last words with an air of triumph; then, as if
fearing Coursegol's objections, he made haste to develop his scheme.

"The assignats have already undergone a very considerable depreciation.
With fifty thousand francs in gold one can, to-day, purchase at least
two hundred thousand francs in assignats; and the depreciation will
become much greater. There is a piece of property in the Faubourg
Saint-Germain which will be ostensibly sold for two millions by the
Republic, but which will really cost the purchaser only two hundred
thousand francs; and, by and by, the owner will have no difficulty in
disposing of it again for the ostensible price he paid for it, and it
will be only natural and right that he should demand gold in payment."

"And in what way could I be of service to you?" Coursegol timidly
inquired.

"By lending me your name. We will buy sometimes in your name, sometimes
in mine, so we shall not arouse suspicion."

"But where shall we find the money?"

Vauquelas arose and, without the slightest hesitation, replied:

"Since I have begun to give you my confidence, I will hide nothing. Come
with me."

Vauquelas, as we have said before, had arrived at the trying age of
three-score and ten, which, for the majority of men, is the age of
decrepitude, that sinister forerunner of death; but time had neither
bowed his head nor enfeebled his intellect. The clearness of his mind
and the vigor of his limbs indicated that he was likely to be one of
those centenarians who carry their years so lightly that they make us
think with regret of that golden age in which the gods could confer
immortality upon man. His eye still flashed with all the ardor of youth;
and in his breast glowed a fire which age was powerless to quench.
Vauquelas had formerly been a magistrate in Arras. A widower, without a
child for whose fate he was compelled to tremble, he had seen the
approach of the Revolution and the Reign of Terror without the slightest
dismay; and the tenth of August found him in Paris, drawn there by the
desire to increase his by no means contemptible fortune, and to win the
favor of those who were then in power.

He had taken up his abode in a modest mansion at the extremity of the
Faubourg du Roule. The house stood in the centre of a garden, which was
prote