The jeweler remarked, jokingly:
“There was a person who invested all her savings
in precious stones.”
Monsieur Lantin replied, seriously:
“It is only another way of investing one’s
money.”
That day he lunched at Voisin’s, and drank wine
worth twenty francs a bottle. Then he hired a
carriage and made a tour of the Bois. He gazed
at the various turnouts with a kind of disdain, and
could hardly refrain from crying out to the occupants:
“I, too, am rich!—I am worth two
hundred thousand francs.”
Suddenly he thought of his employer. He drove
up to the bureau, and entered gaily, saying:
“Sir, I have come to resign my position.
I have just inherited three hundred thousand francs.”
He shook hands with his former colleagues, and confided
to them some of his projects for the future; he then
went off to dine at the Cafe Anglais.
He seated himself beside a gentleman of aristocratic
bearing; and, during the meal, informed the latter
confidentially that he had just inherited a fortune
of four hundred thousand francs.
For the first time in his life, he was not bored at
the theatre, and spent the remainder of the night
in a gay frolic.
Six months afterward, he married again. His second
wife was a very virtuous woman; but had a violent
temper. She caused him much sorrow.
I can tell you neither the name of the country, nor
the name of the man. It was a long, long way
from here on a fertile and burning shore. We had
been walking since the morning along the coast, with
the blue sea bathed in sunlight on one side of us,
and the shore covered with crops on the other.
Flowers were growing quite close to the waves, those
light, gentle, lulling waves. It was very warm,
a soft warmth permeated with the odor of the rich,
damp, fertile soil. One fancied one was inhaling
germs.
I had been told, that evening, that I should meet
with hospitality at the house of a Frenchman who lived
in an orange grove at the end of a promontory.
Who was he? I did not know. He had come there
one morning ten years before, and had bought land
which he planted with vines and sowed with grain.
He had worked, this man, with passionate energy, with
fury. Then as he went on from month to month,
year to year, enlarging his boundaries, cultivating
incessantly the strong virgin soil, he accumulated
a fortune by his indefatigable labor.
But he kept on working, they said. Rising at
daybreak, he would remain in the fields till evening,
superintending everything without ceasing, tormented
by one fixed idea, the insatiable desire for money,
which nothing can quiet, nothing satisfy. He
now appeared to be very rich. The sun was setting
as I reached his house. It was situated as described,
at the end of a promontory in the midst of a grove
of orange trees. It was a large square house,
quite plain, and overlooked the sea. As I approached,
a man wearing a long beard appeared in the doorway.
Having greeted him, I asked if he would give me shelter
for the night. He held out his hand and said,
smiling:
