Molina was too shrewd to run this risk.  He would return at another time, seeing that the minister turned a deaf ear, but pecaire! he sweat huge drops in seeking roundabout phrases, this man who never minced his words and habitually called things by their proper names.  Was the like ever seen!  A pettifogger from Grenoble to floor Salomon Molina!

“It made me warm,” said the money-maker, on leaving the cabinet, “but, deuce take it!  I’ll have my revenge.  One is not a minister always.  You shall pay me dearly, my little fellow, for that uncomfortable little time.”

Vaudrey had thoroughly understood the matter, but he did not intend to allow it to be seen that he did.  That was a simpler way.  He had not had to dismiss the buyer of consciences; he had enjoyed his embarrassment and that was sufficient.

“What, however, if I had spoken to him of money before he had shown his hand!  If I had accepted from him—!” he said to himself.

He shuddered at the thought as he had previously done while Molina was talking to him.  A single imprudence, a single confidence might easily have placed him under the hand of this fat man.  He must, however, find some solution.  The days were rolling away and the bills signed for Marianne would in a very short time reach maturity.

“When I think that this Molina could in one day enable me to gain three times this sum.”

Salomon had just told him:  “To forestall the news on the Bourse is sometimes worth gold ingots!” A forestaller!  As well say the revelation of a State secret, base speculation, almost treachery!  And yet on hearing these words that covered up an insult, he had not even rung for the messenger to show Molina out, but had striven to comprehend nothing!

As the result of this conversation, he felt uncomfortable.  The man had left an odor of pollution, as it were, behind him.

Vaudrey must needs be soon reassured respecting the Gochard paper.  In visiting Marianne, he observed that his mistress was a shrewd woman.  She informed him immediately that Claire Dujarrier whom she had seen, would secure a renewal from Gochard, who was unknown to Vaudrey, from three months to three months until the expiration of six months in consideration of an additional twenty thousand francs for each period of ninety days.

“I did not understand that at first,” Marianne began by remarking.

“Oh!” said Sulpice, “I understand perfectly, it is absolute usury.  But time is ready money, and in six months it will be easier for me to pay one hundred and forty thousand francs than a hundred thousand to-day.  I have plans.”

“What?”

“Very difficult to explain, but quite clear in my mind!  The important part is not to have the date of maturity on the first of June, but on the first of December.”

“Then nothing is more simple.  Madame Dujarrier will arrange it.”

“Is Madame Dujarrier a providence then?”