"My father," said Raphael, "just now you spoke of money. It is true I seek it--but to spend, not to hoard. Too often I hazard it on the turn of a dice-cube. I lose it. Money will not stay with me, neither the golden discs, nor the value of them. This trick of gaming I have inherited from my grandfather. Only he had the good sense to die before he had spent all his heritance. His sons, being given rather to sword-play and the war-game, died before him. To all appearance I was sole heir, and so for long I considered myself. But when my grandfather's will was found, half only was left to me--the other half to his only daughter Colette and to her children. The will is in the provincial archives at Perpignan. He had placed it there himself. A copy is in the registry of the bishop at Elne. Yet another copy was sent to the Huguenot whom my aunt Colette married." "Ah," said the Jesuit, narrowing his eyes in deep thought, "and this heretic--has he never claimed the inheritance?" "He is dead, they say--was killed in Paris, on the day of the Barricades. Yet he received the paper, and now his daughter has come to Collioure, and is abiding at the house of La Masane with the family there--emigrants from Provence--one of whom, by some trick of cunning or aptitude for flattery, has become a professor at the Sorbonne--Doctor Anatole Long, he styles himself." "Ah," said the Jesuit, in a changed, caressing voice, "a learned man; he has written well upon the eloquence of Greece and Rome as applied to the purposes of the Church. I myself have ordered a translation of his books to be made for the use of our schools at Toledo. And yet--I heard something concerning him read from the Gazette of the Order at our last council meeting. Had he not to flee, because he alone of the Senatus withstood the Holy League?" Raphael nodded slightly. The quarrels of philosophers were nothing to him. "Aye, and brought my cousin Claire with him--Colette's daughter, as I suppose, to claim the property--the property which I have no longer--which is blown wantonly upon every wind, rattled in other men's pockets, paid out for laces and silks which I never wore----" "You have been a foolish lad," said the Jesuit; "but one day, when you have spent all, you will make a very good prodigal son to the Gèsu. Perhaps the hour is not far distant. What, then, is your intention?" "I see nothing for it but that I must marry the girl," said Raphael Llorient; "she is fair, and you--and the King--must help me to a dispensation. Then her portion shall be her dower, and there is only her husband to account to for it. I shall be that husband." A subtle change passed over the Jesuit's face as his pupil was speaking. He smiled. "Softly, softly," he murmured; "to eat an egg, it is not necessary to cook it in a silver vessel over a fire of sandalwood, and serve it upon a platter of gold. It tastes just as well boiled in an earthenware dish and eaten in the fingers."