CHAPTER I

M. Levrault had grown enormously rich by selling cloth, and he could boast of a fortune of 3,000,000 francs, When once he had retired from business, ambitions projects began to fill his brain ; and among other things he was most anxious to obtain a title of nobihty, to occupy a position of importance in the Government, and, above ail, to marry his daughter well. It was unfortunate, from many points of view, that his wife was dead, for she, like the famous Madame Jourdain, had been a woman of sound common sensé, and had often advised her husband to be satisfied with his position, to live quietly, and to marry his daughter to an honest lad who would not be ashamed of his wife's family. The daughter, Laure Levrault, was a pretty girl of eighteen, and had been educated in one of the most aristocratie girls' schools in Paris, in the society of budding countesses. She had not been happy among them, for they had seized every opportunity to make fun of her humble origin ; and instead of paying them back in their own coin, Laure had ended by conceiving a profound hatred for the shop in which she had been born. On leaving school, she took in the situation at a glance. She had sufficient intelligence to see that the man who married

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her would marry her for her money, and would regard the union as a matter of business. Consequently, the idea of love never entered her head.

It was at this point that M. Levrault made up his mind to establish himself in a fine estate in the country. With this object he wrote to a lawyer at Nantes, named Jolibois, asking him to take in his name a castle somewhere in Brittany, where he would have the best families in the country as his neighbours. In fact, he would hke to see from his Windows a dozen or so of battlemented castles, with their towers and moats. Now Jolibois was not a fool. When living in Paris, and on the point of buying for himself a practice in the country, he had prowled round Levrault's millions, and had ventured one fine day to ask for Laure's hand. He had been refused, and he now saw a good opportunity for revenge. He wrote a week later to Levrault, saying that he had got the very thing he wanted ; he had secured not merely the castle and the old families and the battlemented towers, but a guide to the neighbourhood in the person of Gaspard de Montflanquin, who was young, handsome, chivalrous, and — a viscount. At the same time Jolibois suggested to the viscount that if the latter married Laure, he would be in a position to pay the debt of 80,000 francs which he owed Jolibois's father. A fortnight later M. Levrault and his daughter left Paris in a post-chaise. The evening before, a traveller in shooting costume started from Paris in the Nantes diligence. It was Gaspard de Montflanquin.