er's million!---- No! The million that belongs to him who is
not your brother--to Clementine's son, my dear and only child, the only
scion of my race, Pierre Langevin, called Pierrot, a miller at
Vergaville!"

"But I assure you, monsieur, that I haven't your million, or anybody's
else."

"You dare to deny it, scoundrel, when I sent it to you by mail, myself!"

"Possibly you sent it, but I certainly have not received it!"

"Aha! Defend yourself!"

He made at his throat, and perhaps France would have lost a Counsellor
of Prefecture that day, if the servant had not come in with two letters
in her hand. Fougas recognized his own handwriting and the Berlin
postmark, tore open the envelope, and displayed the check.

"Here," said he, "is the million I intended for you, if you had seen fit
to be my son! Now it's too late for you to retract. The voice of Nature
calls me to Vergaville. Your servant, sir!"

On the 4th of September, Pierre Langevin, miller at Vergaville,
celebrated the marriage of Cadet Langevin, his second son. The miller's
family was numerous, respectable, and in comfortable circumstances.
First, there was the grandfather, a fine, hale old man, who took his
four meals a day, and doctored his little ailings with the wine of Bar
or Thiaucourt. The grandmother, Catharine, had been pretty in her day,
and a little frivolous; but she expiated by absolute deafness the crime
of having listened too tenderly to gallants. M. Pierre Langevin, alias
Pierrot, alias Big Peter, after having sought his fortune in America (a
custom becoming quite general in the rural districts), had returned to
the village in pretty much the condition of the infant Saint John, and
God only knows how many jokes were perpetrated over his ill luck. The
people of Lorraine are terrible wags, and if you are not fond of
personal jokes, I advise you not to travel in their neighborhood. Big
Peter, stung to the quick, and half crazed at having run through his
inheritance, borrowed money at ten per cent., bought the mill at
Vergaville, worked like a plough-horse in heavy land, and repaid his
capital and the interest. Fortune, who owed him some compensations,
gave him _gratis pro Deo_, a half dozen superb workers--six big boys,
whom his wife presented him with, one annually, as regularly as
clock-work. Every year, nine months, to a day, after the _fete_ of
Vergaville, Claudine (otherwise known as Glaudine) presented one for
baptism. At last she died a