“No,” she would say to herself, as she repeated the author’s fateful words, “no, I will not ‘give my requests the form of an order,’ I will not ‘fly to tears as a means of revenge,’ I will not ’condemn the things I once approved without reservation,’ I will not ’dog his footsteps with a prying eye’; if he plays truant, he shall not on his return ‘see a scornful lip, whose kiss is an unanswerable command.’  No, ‘my silence shall not be a reproach nor my first word a quarrel.’  —­I will not be like every other woman!” she went on, laying on her table the little yellow paper volume which had already attracted Lousteau’s remark, “What! are you studying Adolphe?”—­“If for one day only he should recognize my merits and say, ’That victim never uttered a cry!’—­it will be all I ask.  And besides, the others only have him for an hour; I have him for life!”

Thinking himself justified by his private tribunal in punishing his wife, Monsieur de la Baudraye robbed her to achieve his cherished enterprise of reclaiming three thousand acres of moorland, to which he had devoted himself ever since 1836, living like a mouse.  He manipulated the property left by Monsieur Silas Piedefer so ingeniously, that he contrived to reduce the proved value to eight hundred thousand francs, while pocketing twelve hundred thousand.  He did not announce his return; but while his wife was enduring unspeakable woes, he was building farms, digging trenches, and ploughing rough ground with a courage that ranked him among the most remarkable agriculturists of the province.

The four hundred thousand francs he had filched from his wife were spent in three years on this undertaking, and the estate of Anzy was expected to return seventy-two thousand francs a year of net profits after the taxes were paid.  The eight hundred thousand he invested at four and a half per cent in the funds, buying at eighty francs, at the time of the financial crisis brought about by the Ministry of the First of March, as it was called.  By thus securing to his wife an income of forty-eight thousand francs he considered himself no longer in her debt.  Could he not restore the odd twelve hundred thousand as soon as the four and a half per cents had risen above a hundred?  He was now the greatest man in Sancerre, with the exception of one—­the richest proprietor in France—­whose rival he considered himself.  He saw himself with an income of a hundred and forty thousand francs, of which ninety thousand formed the revenue from the lands he had entailed.  Having calculated that besides this net income he paid ten thousand francs in taxes, three thousand in working expenses, ten thousand to his wife, and twelve hundred to his mother-in-law, he would say in the literary circles of Sancerre: 

“I am reputed miserly, and said to spend nothing; but my outlay amounts to twenty-six thousand five hundred francs a year.  And I have still to pay for the education of my two children!  I daresay it is not a pleasing fact to the Milauds of Nevers, but the second house of La Baudraye may yet have as noble a center as the first.—­I shall most likely go to Paris and petition the King of the French to grant me the title of Count—­Monsieur Roy is a Count—­and my wife would be pleased to be Madame la Comtesse.”