And now, my dear Henri, I bid you farewell in the spirit of a man.  Misfortune has come.  No matter what the cause, it is here.  I strip to meet it.  Poverty and Natalie are two irreconcilable terms.  The balance may be close between my assets and my liabilities, but no one shall have cause to complain of me.  But, should any unforeseen event occur to imperil my honor, I count on you.

Send letters under cover to the Governor of India at Calcutta.  I have friendly relations with his family, and some one there will care for all letters that come to me from Europe.  Dear friend, I hope to find you the same de Marsay on my return,—­the man who scoffs at everything and yet is receptive of the feelings of others when they accord with the grandeur he is conscious of in himself.  You stay in Paris, friend; but when you read these words, I shall be crying out, “To Carthage!”

  The Marquis Henri de Marsay to Comte Paul de Manerville: 

  So, so, Monsieur le comte, you have made a wreck of it!  Monsieur
  l’ambassadeur has gone to the bottom!  Are these the fine things
  that you were doing?

Why, Paul, why have you kept away from me?  If you had said a single word, my poor old fellow, I would have made your position plain to you.  Your wife has refused me her endorsement.  May that one word unseal your eyes!  But, if that does not suffice, learn that your notes have been protested at the instigation of a Sieur Lecuyer, formerly head-clerk to Maitre Solonet, a notary in Bordeaux.  That usurer in embryo (who came from Gascony for jobbery) is the proxy of your very honorable mother-in-law, who is the actual holder of your notes for one hundred thousand francs, on which I am told that worthy woman doled out to you only seventy thousand.  Compared with Madame Evangelista, papa Gobseck is flannel, velvet, vanilla cream, a sleeping draught.  Your vineyard of Belle-Rose is to fall into the clutches of your wife, to whom her mother pays the difference between the price it goes for at the auction sale and the amount of her dower claim upon it.  Madame Evangelista will also have the farms at Guadet and Grassol, and the mortgages on your house in Bordeaux already belong to her, in the names of straw men provided by Solonet.

Thus these two excellent women will make for themselves a united income of one hundred and twenty thousand francs a year out of your misfortunes and forced sale of property, added to the revenue of some thirty-odd thousand on the Grand-livre which these cats already possess.

The endorsement of your wife was not needed; for this morning the said Sieur Lecuyer came to offer me a return of the sum I had lent you in exchange for a legal transfer of my rights.  The vintage of 1825 which your mother-in-law keeps in the cellars at Lanstrac will suffice to pay me.

  These two women have calculated, evidently, that you are now upon
  the ocean; but I send this letter by courier, so that you may have
  time to follow the advice I now give you.