“Thirty thousand francs, or thereabouts. Ah, my dear fellow, didn’t I tell you? You wouldn’t believe me; now you are convinced. The upholsterer whom the duke had agreed to settle with was shown out of the house when he presented himself, and the duke wrote next day to say that he would answer for nothing in regard to Mlle. Gautier. This man wanted his money; he was given part payment out of the few thousand francs that I got from you; then some kind souls warned him that his debtor had been abandoned by the duke and was living with a penniless young man; the other creditors were told the same; they asked for their money, and seized some of the goods. Marguerite wanted to sell everything, but it was too late, and besides I should have opposed it. But it was necessary to pay, and in order not to ask you for money, she sold her horses and her shawls, and pawned her jewels. Would you like to see the receipts and the pawn tickets?” And Prudence opened the drawer and showed me the papers. “Ah, you think,” she continued, with the insistence of a woman who can say, I was right after all, “ah, you think it is enough to be in love, and to go into the country and lead a dreamy, pastoral life. No, my friend, no. By the side of that ideal life, there is a material life, and the purest resolutions are held to earth by threads which seem slight enough, but which are of iron, not easily to be broken. If Marguerite has not been unfaithful to you twenty times, it is because she has an exceptional nature. It is not my fault for not advising her to, for I couldn’t bear to see the poor girl stripping herself of everything. She wouldn’t; she replied that she loved you, and she wouldn’t be unfaithful to you for anything in the world. All that is very pretty, very poetical, but one can’t pay one’s creditors in that coin, and now she can’t free herself from debt, unless she can raise thirty thousand francs.” “All right, I will provide that amount.” “You will borrow it?” “Good heavens! Why, yes!”