Saccard, all fresh from his province, could not at first fathom the delicate depths of Madame Sidonie's numerous callings. As he had during twelve months studied for the bar, she one day spoke to him of the three milliards with a very grave air, which gave him but a poor opinion of her intelligence. She came and rummaged in all the corners of the lodging in the Rue Saint-Jacques, weighed Angèle at a glance, and never again put in an appearance excepting when her own affairs brought her into the neighbourhood, and when she felt a desire to again discuss the question of the three milliards. Angèle had swallowed the bait of the story of the English debt. The woman of business mounted her hobby, and made it rain gold for an hour or more. It was the crack in this shrewd intellect, the gentle myth with which she deluded her life wasted in a wretched traffic, the magical lure that intoxicated not only herself but the more credulous of her clients. Thoroughly convinced, moreover, she ended by speaking of the three milliards as of some private fortune, which the judges would have to restore to her sooner or later, and this shed a marvellous aureola around her shabby black bonnet on which hung a few faded violets attached to brass-wire stems bare of all covering. Angèle would open her eyes wide with amazement. On several occasions, she spoke to her husband of her sister-in-law with great respect, saying that Madame Sidonie would perhaps make them all rich one day. Saccard merely shrugged his shoulders; he had gone and inspected the shop and floor above in the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière, and the only impression he had taken away with him was that of an approaching bankruptcy. He wished to know Eugène's opinion of their sister; but his brother became grave and merely replied that he never saw her, that he knew she was very intelligent, though perhaps rather compromising.