him the estimates for the house at
Nanterre. A big purchase, indeed! A cash price of a hundred and fifty
thousand francs, then considerable expenses in connection with getting
the place into proper order, the personal staff, the bedding, the
nanny-goats for milking purposes, the manager's carriage, the omnibuses
going to meet the children coming by every train. A great deal of money.
But how well off and comfortable they will be there, those dear little
things! what a service rendered to Paris, to humanity! The Government
cannot fail to reward with a bit of red ribbon so disinterested, so
philanthropic a devotion. "The Cross, on the 15th of August." With these
magic words Jenkins will obtain everything he desires. In his merry,
guttural voice, which seems always as though it were hailing a boat in a
fog, the Nabob calls, "Bompain!"

The man in the fez, quickly leaving the liqueur-stand, walks
majestically across the room, whispers, moves away, and returns with
an inkstand and a counterfoil check-book from which the slips detach
themselves and fly away of their own accord. A fine thing, wealth!
To sign a check on his knee for two hundred thousand francs troubles
Jansoulet no more than to draw a louis from his pocket.

Furious, with noses in their cups, the others watch this little scene
from a distance. Then, as Jenkins takes his departure, bright, smiling,
with a nod to the various groups, Monpavon seizes the governor: "Now is
our chance." And both, springing on the Nabob, drag him off towards a
couch, oblige him almost forcibly to sit down, press upon each side of
him with a ferocious little laugh that seems to signify, "What shall we
do with him now?" Get the money out of him, the largest amount possible.
It is needed, to set afloat once more the Territorial Bank, for years
lain aground on a sand-bank, buried to the very top of its masts. A
superb operation, this re-flotation, if these two gentlemen are to be
believed, for the submerged bank is full of ingots, of precious things,
of the thousand various forms of wealth of a new country discussed by
everybody and known by none.

In founding this unique establishment, Paganetti of Porto-Vecchio had
as his aim to monopolize the commercial development of the whole of
Corsica: iron mines, sulphur mines, copper mines, marble quarries,
coral fisheries, oyster beds, water ferruginous and sulphurous, immense
forests of thuya, of cork-oak, and to establish for the facilitati