eighborhood of five hundred million
dollars! The General paused for the effect, solemnly nodding his head
at his astounded auditors in affirmance. Yes, it was even so!

Five hundred million dollars! No more--and no less! Then he once more
took up the thread of his narrative.

Tessier's lands, originally farms, were to-day occupied by huge
_magasins_, government buildings, palaces and hotels. He had been a
frugal, hardworking, far-seeing man of affairs whose money had doubled
itself year by year. Then had appeared one Emmeric Lespinasse, a
Frenchman, also from Bordeaux, who had plotted to rob him of his estate,
and the better to accomplish his purpose had entered the millionaire's
employ. When Tessier died, in 1884, Lespinasse had seized his papers and
the property, destroyed his will, dispersed the clerks, secretaries,
"notaries" and accountants of the deceased, and quietly got rid of such
persons as stood actively in his way. The great wealth thus acquired had
enabled him to defy those who knew that he was not entitled to the
fortune, and that the real heirs were in far-away France.

He had prospered like the bay tree. His daughter, Marie Louise, had
married a distinguished English nobleman, and his sons were now the
richest men in America. Yet they lived with the sword of Damocles over
their heads, suspended by a single thread, and the General had the knife
wherewith to cut it. Lespinasse, among other things, had caused the
murder of the husband of Madame Luchia, and she was in possession of
conclusive proofs which, at the proper moment, could be produced to
convict him of his many crimes, or at least to oust his sons and
daughter from the stolen inheritance.

It was a weird, bizarre nightmare, no more astonishing than the novels
the Lapierres had read. America, they understood, was a land where the
rivers were full of gold--a country of bronzed and handsome savages, of
birds of paradise and ruined Aztec temples, of vast tobacco fields and
plantations of thousands of acres of cotton cultivated by naked slaves,
while one lay in a hammock fanned by a "_petite negre_" and languidly
sipped _eau sucree_. The General had made it all seem very, very real.
At the weak spots he had gesticulated convincingly and digressed upon
his health. Then, while the narrative was fresh and he might have had to
answer questions about it had he given his listeners opportunity to ask
them, he had hastily told of a visit to Tunis. There he