the hermit up. He found him calm
and collected. "You see that strip of land bordering the garden over
there?" the latter said, looking out of the window. "Yes." "I am about
to establish there a dairy, with an installation of the best kind, the
cows of which will bring me in three thousand francs a year." Gozlan
stared. "And you see the other strip down yonder farther than the
wall?" "Yes." "Well, I intend to plant that with rare vegetables of
the sort that used to be supplied to the King's table. That will bring
me in another three thousand francs a year." Gozlan waited for what
would come next. "And you see the plot right facing the southern sun?"
"Yes." "Ah! there I shall plant a vineyard, which will furnish
exquisite grapes that I can sell for wine-making in quantities
sufficient to bring me in twelve thousand francs a year. This means a
revenue of eighteen thousand francs annually. And then, the walnut-tree
you see there--I can utilize it to the tune of two thousand francs a
year." "How?" "Ah! that is my secret. So we get a total of twenty
thousand francs a year, which I shall gain by the refusal of my
_Vautrin_."

This was brave talk on the part of the obstacle-breaker, as he loved
to call himself. 'Twas also the bravest temper he could assume in face
of the outside world. To Madame Hanska he revealed more the cankering
disappointment, just as he had a twelvemonth previously, after the
mishap of the _School for Husbands and Wives_. He had fresh thoughts
of leaving France, which being, for the nonce, a bear-garden, he said,
he detested, and of going away to America, perhaps to Brazil, where he
should soon grow rich. He even told her she might next hear from him
at Havre or Marseilles, just as he was on the point of embarking for
the other side of the Atlantic. He had been reading Fenimore Cooper
again; and the descriptions given by this painter of Nature always
aroused his roaming instincts. He envied especially Cooper's power and
skill in reproducing the details of a landscape. Once, in a
pastry-cook's shop that he had entered with Gozlan to devour a plate of
macaroni, he brandished a book of Cooper's, which he had been carrying
under his arm, while he recounted his fruitless efforts to get experts
in botany to tell him how to describe the differences between certain
grasses that he wanted to distinguish appropriately in his fiction. An
English girl who had served him in the shop listened open-mouthed to
the grea