He had prospered like the bay tree.  His daughter, Marie Louise, had married a distinguished English nobleman, and his sons were now the richest men in America.  Yet they lived with the sword of Damocles over their heads, suspended by a single thread, and the General had the knife wherewith to cut it.  Lespinasse, among other things, had caused the murder of the husband of Madame Luchia, and she was in possession of conclusive proofs which, at the proper moment, could be produced to convict him of his many crimes, or at least to oust his sons and daughter from the stolen inheritance.

It was a weird, bizarre nightmare, no more astonishing than the novels the Lapierres had read.  America, they understood, was a land where the rivers were full of gold—­a country of bronzed and handsome savages, of birds of paradise and ruined Aztec temples, of vast tobacco fields and plantations of thousands of acres of cotton cultivated by naked slaves, while one lay in a hammock fanned by a “petite negre” and languidly sipped eau sucree.  The General had made it all seem very, very real.  At the weak spots he had gesticulated convincingly and digressed upon his health.  Then, while the narrative was fresh and he might have had to answer questions about it had he given his listeners opportunity to ask them, he had hastily told of a visit to Tunis.  There he had by chance encountered Marie Louise, the daughter of Lespinasse, living with her noble husband in a “handsome Oriental palace,” had been invited to dine with them and had afterward seized the occasion while “walking in the garden” with the lady to disclose the fact that he knew all, and had it in his power to ruin them as impostors.  Marie Louise had been frightfully angry, but afterward her better nature had suggested the return of the inheritance, or at least a hundred millions or so, to the rightful heirs.  The General had left the palace believing all would be well, and had retired to Paris to await letters and further developments, but these had never come, and he had discovered that he had been deceived.  It had been merely a ruse on the part of the woman and her husband to gain time, and now every step that he took was dogged by spies in the pay of the Lespinasses, who followed him everywhere.  But the right would triumph!  He had sworn to run the conspiracy to earth!

Many hours were consumed in the telling of the story.  The Lapierres were enchanted.  More than that, they were convinced—­persuaded that they were heirs to the richest inheritance in the world, which comprised most of the great American city of New York.

Persons who were going to participate in twenty-five hundred millions of francs could afford to be hospitable.  M. le General stayed to dinner.  A list of the heirs living in or near Bordeaux was made out with the share of each in the inheritance carefully computed.  Madame Lapierre’s was only fifty million dollars—­but still that was almost enough to buy up Bordeaux.  And they could purchase Monsegur as a country place.  The General spoke of a stable of automobiles by means of which the journey from Bordeaux to the farm could be accomplished in the space of an hour.