Five francs would scarcely support her grandmother a week, with even the wood and wine she had on hand, and she had no more gold thimbles to sacrifice.
"The price of each handkerchief is five and twenty francs, mademoiselle--" she had offered the day before to sell us to the wife of one of the richest agents de change in Paris, at a napoleon a piece--"the price is five and twenty francs, if you take the dozen, but as you appear to wish only ONE, rather than not oblige you, it may be had for eight and twenty."
"Twelve thousand francs! Are you mad?" cried Baisemeaux; "the old miser gave me no more than six thousand, and the expenses of the post amounted to six thousand five hundred francs.
"You owe Aramis one hundred and fifty thousand francs, then?"
To-day, however, is the thirty-first of May, and he has not been yet, and to-morrow, at midday, the payment falls due; if, therefore, I don't pay to-morrow, those gentlemen can, by the terms of the contract, break off the bargain; I shall be stripped of everything; I shall have worked for three years, and given two hundred and fifty thousand francs for nothing, absolutely for nothing at all, dear M.
Richard, ought to know better than I where the twenty thousand francs went to!"
Richard ought to know better than you where the twenty-thousand francs went to?"
"Why should I know better than you where the twenty-thousand francs went to?
Would you buy me for fifty thousand francs as De Griers did?" she gasped between her convulsive sobs.
Are you going to hand me over my fifty thousand francs?"
"Then TAKE your fifty thousand francs!" and she hurled them full in my face.
I wonder what he would have said when I gave him twenty-nine thousand eight hundred
francs for his picture."
To explain the problematic existence of the chevalier, the historian, whom Truth, that cruel wanton, grasps by the throat, is compelled to say that after the "glorious" sad days of July, Alencon discovered that the chevalier's nightly winnings amounted to about one hundred and fifty francs every three months; and that the clever old nobleman had had the pluck to send to himself his annuity in order not to appear in the eyes of a community, which loves the main chance, to be entirely without resources.
To return to the period of which we are writing: after about fifteen years of this way of life the chevalier had amassed ten thousand and some odd hundred francs. On the return of the Bourbons, one of his old friends, the Marquis de Pombreton, formerly lieutenant in the Black mousquetaires, returned to him--so he said--twelve hundred pistoles which he had lent to the marquis for the purpose of emigrating.
Having obtained the address of the person to whom the house in the Allees de Meillan belonged, Dantes next proceeded thither, and, under the name of Lord Wilmore (the name and title inscribed on his passport), purchased the small dwelling for the sum of twenty-five thousand
francs, at least ten thousand more than it was worth; but had its owner asked half a million, it would unhesitatingly have been given.
