There came days, however, when Marc and David, who co-operated in brotherly fashion, began to lose some of their fine assurance. Bad rumours reached them. The Congregations were bestirring themselves frantically. Father Crabot was for ever visiting Beaumont, availing himself of his society connections to dine with government officials, members of the judicial and even the university world. As the Jew prisoner seemed more and more likely to secure release, so, on all sides, the battle grew fiercer. At last, then, it occurred to David to endeavour to obtain the support of Baron Nathan, the great banker and former proprietor of La Désirade, who was staying there as the guest of his daughter, the Countess de Sanglebœuf, whose marriage portion had consisted of that royal domain and a sum of ten millions of francs[1] in hard cash. Thus, one bright afternoon in August, David and Marc, who also had a slight acquaintance with the Baron, set out on foot for La Désirade, a very pleasant walk, for the distance from Maillebois was not much more than a mile. [Footnote 1: About $1,940,000.] Count Hector de Sanglebœuf, the last scion of his house, one of the early members of which had been squire to St. Louis, had found himself completely ruined when he was only thirty-six years of age. His father had devoured the greater part of the family fortune and he himself had consumed the remnants. After holding a commission in the Cuirassiers, he had resigned it, feeling tired of garrison life; and for a time he had remained living with a widow, the Marchioness de Boise, who was ten years his senior, and far too intent on her own comfort to marry him, for her penury, added to his own, would only have conduced to a disastrous future. People related that it was this mistress who had ingeniously arranged the Count's marriage with Baron Nathan's daughter Lia, a young person of four and twenty, very beautiful and all ablaze with millions. Nathan had negotiated the transaction with his eyes open, knowing perfectly well what he gave and what he was to receive in exchange, adding his daughter to the millions which left his safe in order that he might have as son-in-law a Count of very old and authentic nobility, which circumstance would open to him the portals of a sphere from which he had been hitherto excluded.