The two young men were much at Passy, and the invitations elsewhere which they had once been forced to invent now really existed. The whole face of existence, indeed, was changed for them,--for Marsac as for Fontaine. Fontaine had always thought Marsac the cleverest fellow in the world, and he now ranked him with Napoleon and Alexander the Great. The play had been produced, and was immensely successful; the picture had been exhibited, and highly praised; while at the journalists’ dinner, Marsac’s speech delivered by Fontaine had marked Fontaine forever as a born after-dinner speaker and a man of _esprit_. This last reputation was amply confirmed by the brilliant articles, signed by Fontaine and written by Marsac, which sparkled three times a week upon the pages of “La Lune.” In short, it appeared as if the mere report of a fortune of two million francs was enough to produce two million francs. But the real fact was that Marsac, hitherto an unappreciated genius, had risen to the great occasion offered him, and his success was not that of a charlatan. It was that of a man of parts, accomplishments, and that large generosity which does a good thing and troubles not that the world gives the credit to some one else. And as everybody believed in the defunct Uncle Maurice, Fontaine and Marsac actually seemed to be deceived by their own illusion, and would talk quite gravely between themselves of Uncle Maurice,--his tastes, his habits, and his appearance. As for the real Uncle Maurice, nothing more had been heard of him, and the two young men easily persuaded themselves that nothing would. In any event, they did not intend to cross the bridge until they came to it; and some of the advantages gained by the fictitious uncle were of so solid a nature that even if Uncle Maurice turned up, he could not rob them of the entire fruits of their scheme.