“He had married a widow, the mother of a little girl called Aurelie d’Asteux. His wife’s father, Etienne d’Asteux, was an old eccentric who lived in the country, an inventor, an inquirer always on the lookout for new facts and who, several times, had just missed acquiring a great fortune or discovering a great secret which gives you a great fortune. Now, some time before the marriage of his daughter with Bregeac, he appeared to have discovered one of those miraculous secrets. At least he lays claim to having done so in the letters he wrote to his daughter; and to prove it to her, he made her come, with the little Aurelie, to visit him. The journey was kept secret but unfortunately Bregeac learned about it, not much later, as Mademoiselle thinks, but almost immediately. He questioned his wife about it. Keeping silent about the essential facts, as she had sworn to her father to do, and refusing to tell him the place they had been to, she made certain admissions which led Bregeac to believe that Etienne d’Asteux had buried a treasure somewhere. Where? And why not reap the benefit of it now? “Their home life became painful. Bregeac grew more irritated every day. He writes importunate letters to Etienne d’Asteux, questions the child, who does not answer, persecutes his wife, threatens her, in a word lives in a state of growing excitement. “Then, one on the top of the other, two events bring his exasperation to its height. His wife dies of pleurisy and he learns that his father-in-law, attacked by a serious illness, is doomed to an early death. Bregeac falls into a panic. What will become of the secret, if Etienne d’Asteux does not speak? What will become of the treasure if Etienne d’Asteux leaves it to his grand-daughter Aurelie, on the condition of her coming into possession of it on attaining her majority, as he talked of doing in one of his letters? In either case Bregeac would get nothing. All these riches, which he presumed to be fabulous, would pass him by. It was necessary, at any cost, by any means, to learn the secret. “These means a fatal chance put in his way. In handling a case of robbery and hunting down the thieves he lay hands on his three old comrades of Cherbourg, Jodot, Loubeaux, and Ancivel. The temptation was too great for him. He succumbs to it and tells them the story. They come to an agreement on the spot: for the three rogues it means immediate liberty. They will go straight to the Provençal village, in which the old man is in his dying agony, and tear from him, by force if necessary, the information they must have. “The plot failed. The old man, assaulted in the middle of the night by the three blackguards, summoned to answer their questions and tortured, dies without speaking a word. The three murderers take to flight. Bregeac has on his conscience a crime from which he has reaped no benefit.”