on found out that M. le Marquis had not a single louis
of his own to bless himself with, and that it was Papa Mosenstein's
millions that kept up the young people's magnificent establishment in
the Rue de Grammont.

I also found out that Mme. la Marquise was some dozen years older than
Monsieur, and that she had been a widow when she married him. There
were rumours that her first marriage had not been a happy one. The
husband, M. le Compte de Naquet, had been a gambler and a spendthrift,
and had dissipated as much of his wife's fortune as he could lay his
hands on, until one day he went off on a voyage to America, or
goodness knows where, and was never heard of again. Mme. la Comtesse,
as she then was, did not grieve over her loss; indeed, she returned to
the bosom of her family, and her father--a shrewd usurer, who had
amassed an enormous fortune during the wars--succeeded, with the aid
of his apparently bottomless moneybags, in having his first son-in-law
declared deceased by Royal decree, so as to enable the beautiful
Rachel to contract another, yet more brilliant alliance, as far as
name and lineage were concerned, with the Marquis de Firmin-Latour.

Indeed, I learned that the worthy Israelite's one passion was the
social advancement of his daughter, whom he worshipped. So, as soon as
the marriage was consummated and the young people were home from their
honeymoon, he fitted up for their use the most extravagantly sumptuous
apartment Paris had ever seen. Nothing seemed too good or too
luxurious for Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour. He desired her to cut
a brilliant figure in Paris society--nay, to be the Ville Lumiere's
brightest and most particular star. After the town house he bought a
chateau in the country, horses and carriages, which he placed at the
disposal of the young couple; he kept up an army of servants for them,
and replenished their cellars with the choicest wines. He threw money
about for diamonds and pearls which his daughter wore, and paid all
his son-in-law's tailors' and shirt-makers' bills. But always the
money was his, you understand? The house in Paris was his, so was the
chateau on the Loire; he lent them to his daughter. He lent her the
diamonds, and the carriages, and the boxes at the opera and the
Francais. But here his generosity ended. He had been deceived in his
daughter's first husband; some of the money which he had given her had
gone to pay the gambling debts of an unscrupulous spend