Thus I very soon found out that M. le Marquis had not a single louis of his own to bless himself with, and that it was Papa Mosenstein’s millions that kept up the young people’s magnificent establishment in the Rue de Grammont.

I also found out that Mme. la Marquise was some dozen years older than Monsieur, and that she had been a widow when she married him.  There were rumours that her first marriage had not been a happy one.  The husband, M. le Compte de Naquet, had been a gambler and a spendthrift, and had dissipated as much of his wife’s fortune as he could lay his hands on, until one day he went off on a voyage to America, or goodness knows where, and was never heard of again.  Mme. la Comtesse, as she then was, did not grieve over her loss; indeed, she returned to the bosom of her family, and her father—­a shrewd usurer, who had amassed an enormous fortune during the wars—­succeeded, with the aid of his apparently bottomless moneybags, in having his first son-in-law declared deceased by Royal decree, so as to enable the beautiful Rachel to contract another, yet more brilliant alliance, as far as name and lineage were concerned, with the Marquis de Firmin-Latour.

Indeed, I learned that the worthy Israelite’s one passion was the social advancement of his daughter, whom he worshipped.  So, as soon as the marriage was consummated and the young people were home from their honeymoon, he fitted up for their use the most extravagantly sumptuous apartment Paris had ever seen.  Nothing seemed too good or too luxurious for Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour.  He desired her to cut a brilliant figure in Paris society—­nay, to be the Ville Lumiere’s brightest and most particular star.  After the town house he bought a chateau in the country, horses and carriages, which he placed at the disposal of the young couple; he kept up an army of servants for them, and replenished their cellars with the choicest wines.  He threw money about for diamonds and pearls which his daughter wore, and paid all his son-in-law’s tailors’ and shirt-makers’ bills.  But always the money was his, you understand?  The house in Paris was his, so was the chateau on the Loire; he lent them to his daughter.  He lent her the diamonds, and the carriages, and the boxes at the opera and the Francais.  But here his generosity ended.  He had been deceived in his daughter’s first husband; some of the money which he had given her had gone to pay the gambling debts of an unscrupulous spendthrift.  He was determined that this should not occur again.  A man might spend his wife’s money—­indeed, the law placed most of it at his disposal in those days—­but he could not touch or mortgage one sou that belonged to his father-in-law.  And, strangely enough, Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour acquiesced and aided her father in his determination.  Whether it was the Jewish blood in her, or merely obedience to old Mosenstein’s whim, it were impossible to say.  Certain it is that out of the lavish pin-money which her father gave her as a free gift from time to time, she only doled out a meagre allowance to her husband, and although she had everything she wanted, M. le Marquis on his side had often less than twenty francs in his pocket.