rance, every
household was on its door-step and curious faces were at all the
windows.

The second time the old bachelor went out he drove to Bourges, where, to
escape the trouble of attending personally to the business, or, if you
prefer it, being ordered to do so by Flore, he went before a notary and
signed a power of attorney in favor of Maxence Gilet, enabling him to
make all the transfers enumerated in the document. Flore reserved to
herself the business of making Monsieur sell out the investments in
Issoudun and its immediate neighborhood. The principal notary in Bourges
was requested by Rouget to get him a loan of one hundred and forty
thousand francs on his landed estate. Nothing was known at Issoudun
of these proceedings, which were secretly and cleverly carried out.
Maxence, who was a good rider, went with his own horse to Bourges and
back between five in the morning and five in the afternoon. Flore never
left the old bachelor. Rouget consented without objection to the action
Flore dictated to him; but he insisted that the investment in the Funds,
producing fifty thousand francs a year, should stand in Flore's name as
holding a life-interest only, and in his as owner of the principal. The
tenacity the old man displayed in the domestic disputes which this idea
created caused Max a good deal of anxiety; he thought he could see the
result of reflections inspired by the sight of the natural heirs.

Amid all these movements, which Max concealed from the knowledge of
everyone, he forgot the Spaniard and his granary. Fario came back
to Issoudun to deliver his corn, after various trips and business
manoeuvres undertaken to raise the price of cereals. The morning after
his arrival he noticed that the roof the church of the Capuchins was
black with pigeons. He cursed himself for having neglected to examine
its condition, and hurried over to look into his storehouse, where he
found half his grain devoured. Thousands of mice-marks and rat-marks
scattered about showed a second cause of ruin. The church was a
Noah's-ark. But anger turned the Spaniard white as a bit of cambric
when, trying to estimate the extent of the destruction and his
consequence losses, he noticed that the grain at the bottom of the heap,
near the floor, was sprouting from the effects of water, which Max had
managed to introduce by means of tin tubes into the very centre of the
pile of wheat. The pigeons and the rats could be explained by animal
insti