accession to wealth? A moment later a second deed
made me possessor, on payment of one hundred and eighty thousand francs
in ready money, of the Chateau d'Arcis,--a grand edifice which had
caught my eye, on my first arrival in the town, by its lordly and feudal
air.

"You may congratulate yourselves," said Achille Pigoult, "that you have
got that estate for a song."

"Come, come!" said Jacques Bricheteau, "how long have you had it on
your hands to sell? Your client would have let it go for one hundred and
fifty thousand to others, but, as family property, you thought you could
get more from us. We shall have to spend twenty thousand to make the
house habitable; the land doesn't return a rental of more than four
thousand; so that our money, all expenses deducted, won't return us more
than two and a half per cent."

"What are you complaining about?" returned Achille Pigoult. "You have
employment to give and money to pay in the neighborhood, and what can be
better for a candidate?"

"Ah! that electoral business," said Jacques Bricheteau; "we will talk
about that to-morrow when we bring you the purchase-money and your
fees."

Thereupon we took leave, and returned to the Hotel de la Poste, where I
bade good-night to my father and came to my room to write to you.

Now I must tell you the terrible idea that drove sleep from my brain
and put the pen once more in my hand,--although I am somewhat distracted
from it by writing the foregoing two pages, and I do not see quite as
much evidence for my notion as I did before I renewed this letter.

One thing is certain: during the last year many romantic incidents have
happened to me. You may say that adventure seems to be the logical way
of life for one in my position; that my birth, the chances that brought
you (whose fate is so like mine) and me together, my relations with
Marianina and my handsome housekeeper, and perhaps I might say with
Madame de l'Estorade, all point to the possession of a fickle star, and
that my present affair is only one of its caprices.

True; but what if, at the present moment under the influence of that
star, I were implicated without my knowledge in some infernal plot of
which I was made the passive instrument?

To put some order into my ideas, I begin by this half-million spent for
an interest which you must agree is very nebulous,--that of fitting me
to succeed my father in the ministry of some imaginary country, the name
of which is careful