"It isn't true, in fact," rejoined the secretary. "Monsieur le Marquis still has a capital much larger than the fifteen hundred thousand francs that you inherited from Madame de Claviers. After he rendered his accounts as guardian, you gave him a general power of attorney which included the right to sell and to mortgage. You did it because he inherited a fourth of your mother's property, say five hundred thousand francs. That property consisted in part of houses. You insisted that it should remain undivided. It is sufficient, therefore, for him to be all straight with you, that he should turn over to you the fifteen hundred thousand francs, the income of which he has always paid you in full; he can do it, but on one condition, and that is a _sine qua non_: he must sell the personal property at Grandchamp,--the only thing that he can realize on. The lands and buildings are so loaded down with mortgages and so hard to turn into cash,--we need not talk of that. How long should you have to wait, do you suppose? And you would not be a privileged creditor. You have come of yourself to the point to which I was trying to bring you. That is the whole motive of my action, Landri. You can get Monsieur de Claviers out of this cul-de-sac, you and nobody else, and you can do it by demanding your fortune." "I? of him?" "Yes, you, and by withdrawing your power of attorney. He will not choose, that you should for a second suspect him of having misused it. He won't have any peace until he has restored it all to you, on the spot. If Altona's four million is offered him at that moment, he'll accept it. Grandchamp stripped of its treasures is horrible to think of, I agree. But one can refurnish a dismantled château. One can not reconstruct a squandered fortune, and with five years more of this life yours is gone, forever. I owed you the truth. I have told it to you. Make up your mind." While Chaffin was formulating these suggestions Landri looked at him in such a way that the other had to avert his eyes. For the first time the former pupil of the dishonest steward asked himself this question: "Is this really the same man?" In the flare of a sudden intuition he caught a glimpse of the dangerous plot woven about the ancient estate, one of the artisans of which was this man who advised him--to do what? To commit moral parricide, in view of M. de Claviers' character. But it was only a gleam. This cruel advice might, after all, have been suggested to the steward, at his wits' end, by the desperation born of one of those crises in affairs in which humanity vanishes before the implacability of figures. However that might be, Landri had been wounded too deeply in his instinctive delicacy, and a restrained indignation trembled in his reply.