Gaubertin wrung one hundred and fifty thousand francs out of Les Aigues, with which he speculated on the stock-market in Paris.  With her purse full of assignats Mademoiselle was actually obliged to obtain ready money from her diamonds, now useless to her.  She gave them to Gaubertin, who sold them, and faithfully returned to her their full price.  This proof of honesty touched her heart; henceforth she believed in Gaubertin as she did in Piccini.

In 1796, at the time of his marriage with the citoyenne Isaure Mouchon, daughter of an old “conventional,” a friend of his father, Gaubertin possessed about three hundred and fifty thousand francs in money.  As the Directory seemed to him likely to last, he determined, before marrying, to have the accounts of his five years’ stewardship ratified by Mademoiselle, under pretext of a new departure.

“I am to be the head of a family,” he said to her; “you know the reputation of land-stewards; my father-in-law is a republican of Roman austerity, and a man of influence as well; I want to prove to him that I am as upright as he.”

Mademoiselle Laguerre accepted his accounts at once in very flattering terms.

In those earlier days the steward had endeavored, in order to win the confidence of Madame des Aigues (as Mademoiselle was then called) to repress the depredations of the peasantry; fearing, and not without reason, that the revenues would suffer too severely, and that his private bonus from the buyers of the timber would sensibly diminish.  But in those days the sovereign people felt the soil was their own everywhere; Madame was afraid of the surrounding kings and told her Richelieu that the first desire of her soul was to die in peace.  The revenues of the late singer were so far in excess of her expenses that she allowed all the worst, and, as it proved, fatal precedents to be established.  To avoid a lawsuit, she allowed the neighbors to encroach upon her land.  Knowing that the park walls were sufficient protection, she did not fear any interruption of her personal comfort, and cared for nothing but her peaceful existence, true philosopher that she was!  A few thousand a year more or less, the indemnities exacted by the wood-merchants for the damages committed by the peasants,—­what were they to a careless and extravagant Opera-girl, who had gained her hundred thousand francs a year at the cost of pleasure only, and who had just submitted, without a word of remonstrance, to a reduction of two thirds of an income of sixty thousand francs?

“Dear me!” she said, in the easy tone of the wantons of the old time, “people must live, even if they are republicans.”