The general was deceived by appearances; for Gaubertin’s external behavior was not of a nature to warn or to alarm him. The late steward followed his old custom of pretending, not exactly poverty, but limited means. For years he had talked of his wife and three children, and the heavy expenses of a large family. Mademoiselle Laguerre, to whom he had declared himself too poor to educate his son in Paris, paid the costs herself, and allowed her dear godson (for she was Claude Gaubertin’s sponsor) two thousand francs a year. The day after the quarrel, Gaubertin came, with a keeper named Courtecuisse, and demanded with much insolence his release in full of all claims, showing the general the one he had obtained from his late mistress in such flattering terms, and asking, ironically, that a search should be made for the property, real and otherwise, which he was supposed to have stolen. If he had received fees from the wood-merchants on their purchases and from the farmers on their leases, Mademoiselle Laguerre, he said, had always allowed it; not only did she gain by the bargains he made, but everything went on smoothly without troubling her. The country-people would have died, he remarked, for Mademoiselle, whereas the general was laying up for himself a store of difficulties. Gaubertin--and this trait is frequently to be seen in the majority of those professions in which the property of others can be taken by means not foreseen by the Code--considered himself a perfectly honest man. In the first place, he had so long had possession of the money extorted from Mademoiselle Laguerre’s farmers through fear, and paid in assignats, that he regarded it as legitimately acquired. It was a mere matter of exchange. He thought that in the end he should have quite as much risk with coin as with paper. Besides, legally, Mademoiselle had no right to receive any payment except in assignats. “Legally” is a fine, robust adverb, which bolsters up many a fortune! Moreover, he reflected that ever since great estates and land-agents had existed, that is, ever since the origin of society, the said agents had set up, for their own use, an argument such as we find our cooks using in this present day. Here it is, in its simplicity:-- “If my mistress,” says the cook, “went to market herself, she would have to pay more for her provisions than I charge her; she is the gainer, and the profits I make do more good in my hands than in those of the dealers.” “If Mademoiselle,” thought Gaubertin, “were to manage Les Aigues herself, she would never get thirty thousand francs a year out of it; the peasants, the dealers, the workmen would rob her of the rest. It is much better that I should have it, and so enable her to live in peace.”