very least."

"You exaggerate!" cried the Captain, his eyes suddenly sparkling.

"Easy to calculate," said Magnian confidently--"Madame Bouchereau
inherited a hundred thousand francs from her father, she will have a
hundred and fifty thousand from her mother, and her husband will leave
her three hundred and fifty thousand more: add that up."

"Her husband's fortune is secured to her, then, by marriage contract?"
inquired Pelletier, who had listened with rapidly increasing interest to
his companion's enumeration.

"Every _sou_," replied the physician, solemnly.

The two words were worth an hour's oration, and with a person whom he
esteemed intelligent, M. Magnian would not have added another. But,
remembering that the Captain, as he had said a few hours before, was
more richly endowed with shoulders than with brains, he did not fear to
weigh a little heavily upon an idea from which he expected a magical
result.

"For you," he jestingly resumed, "who have the bump of matrimony finely
developed, here would be a capital match. Young, pretty, amiable, and a
fortune of six hundred thousand francs. Though, to be sure, if you kill
the husband, you can hardly expect to marry the widow."

Pelletier forced a laugh, which ill agreed with the thoughtful
expression his physiognomy had assumed; then he changed the
conversation. Certain that he had attained his end, the Doctor pleaded a
professional visit, and left the Captain upon the boulevard, struck to
the very heart by the six hundred thousand francs of the future widow.

Without halt or pause, and with the furious velocity of a wounded
wild-boar, Pelletier went, without help of omnibus, from the Madeleine
to the Bastille. When he reached the Porte St Martin, his determination
was already taken.

"Without knowing it," he thought, "the Doctor has given me excellent
advice. Fight Bouchereau! not so stupid. I should kill him; I am so
unlucky! and then how could I reappear before Virginia? The little
coquette views me with no indifferent eye; and luckily I have made love
to her for the last three months, so that when the grand day comes, she
cannot suppose I love her for her money. Kill Bouchereau! that _would_
be absurd. Let him die in his bed, the dear man--I shall not prevent it.
I shall have plenty of fighting with my rivals, as soon as his wife is a
widow. Six hundred thousand francs! They'll throng about her like bees
round a honey-pot. But let them take care; I'm fir