“Loves you? yes, more than she loves the duke,” answered the dwarf, rousing himself from a stupor which was admirably played. “She loves you for your disinterestedness. She told me she was ready to make the greatest sacrifices for your sake; to give up dress and spend as little as possible on herself, and devote her life to showing you that in marrying her you hadn’t done so” (hiccough) “bad a thing for yourself. She’s as right as a trivet,--yes, and well informed. She knows everything, that girl.” “And she has three hundred thousand francs?” “There may be quite as much as that,” cried the dwarf, enthusiastically. “Papa Mignon,--mignon by name, mignon by nature, and that’s why I respect him,--well, he would rob himself of everything to marry his daughter. Your Restoration” (hiccough) “has taught him how to live on half-pay; he’d be quite content to live with Dumay on next to nothing, if he could rake and scrape enough together to give the little one three hundred thousand francs. But don’t let’s forget that Dumay is going to leave all his money to Modeste. Dumay, you know, is a Breton, and that fact clinches the matter; he won’t go back from his word, and his fortune is equal to the colonel’s. But I don’t approve of Monsieur Mignon’s taking back that villa, and, as they often ask my advice, I told them so. ‘You sink too much in it,’ I said; ‘if Vilquin does not buy it back there’s two hundred thousand francs which won’t bring you a penny; it only leaves you a hundred thousand to get along with, and it isn’t enough.’ The colonel and Dumay are consulting about it now. But nevertheless, between you and me, Modeste is sure to be rich. I hear talk on the quays against it; but that’s all nonsense; people are jealous. Why, there’s no such ‘dot’ in Havre,” cried Butscha, beginning to count on his fingers. “Two to three hundred thousand in ready money,” bending back the thumb of his left hand with the forefinger of his right, “that’s one item; the reversion of the villa Mignon, that’s another; ‘tertio,’ Dumay’s property!” doubling down his middle finger. “Ha! little Modeste may count upon her six hundred thousand francs as soon as the two old soldiers have got their marching orders for eternity.” This coarse and candid statement, intermingled with a variety of liqueurs, sobered Canalis as much as it appeared to befuddle Butscha. To the latter, a young provincial, such a fortune must of course seem colossal. He let his head fall into the palm of his right hand, and putting his elbows majestically on the table, blinked his eyes and continued talking to himself:-- “In twenty years, thanks to that Code, which pillages fortunes under what they call ‘Successions,’ an heiress worth a million will be as rare as generosity in a money-lender. Suppose Modeste does want to spend all the interest of her own money,--well, she is so pretty, so sweet and pretty; why she’s--you poets are always after metaphors--she’s a weasel as tricky as a monkey.”