As he was about to leave the store, he turned toward the merchant, who still wore the same knowing smile, and lowering his eyes, said: 

“I have—­I have other gems, which came from the same source.  Will you buy them, also?”

The merchant bowed:  “Certainly, sir.”

Monsieur Lantin said gravely:  “I will bring them to you.”  An hour later, he returned with the gems.

The large diamond earrings were worth twenty thousand francs; the bracelets, thirty-five thousand; the rings, sixteen thousand; a set of emeralds and sapphires, fourteen thousand; a gold chain with solitaire pendant, forty thousand—­making the sum of one hundred and forty-three thousand francs.

The jeweler remarked, jokingly: 

“There was a person who invested all her savings in precious stones.”

Monsieur Lantin replied, seriously: 

“It is only another way of investing one’s money.”

That day he lunched at Voisin’s, and drank wine worth twenty francs a bottle.  Then he hired a carriage and made a tour of the Bois.  He gazed at the various turnouts with a kind of disdain, and could hardly refrain from crying out to the occupants: 

“I, too, am rich!—­I am worth two hundred thousand francs.”

Suddenly he thought of his employer.  He drove up to the bureau, and entered gaily, saying: 

“Sir, I have come to resign my position.  I have just inherited three hundred thousand francs.”

He shook hands with his former colleagues, and confided to them some of his projects for the future; he then went off to dine at the Cafe Anglais.

He seated himself beside a gentleman of aristocratic bearing; and, during the meal, informed the latter confidentially that he had just inherited a fortune of four hundred thousand francs.

For the first time in his life, he was not bored at the theatre, and spent the remainder of the night in a gay frolic.

Six months afterward, he married again.  His second wife was a very virtuous woman; but had a violent temper.  She caused him much sorrow.

FASCINATION

I can tell you neither the name of the country, nor the name of the man.  It was a long, long way from here on a fertile and burning shore.  We had been walking since the morning along the coast, with the blue sea bathed in sunlight on one side of us, and the shore covered with crops on the other.  Flowers were growing quite close to the waves, those light, gentle, lulling waves.  It was very warm, a soft warmth permeated with the odor of the rich, damp, fertile soil.  One fancied one was inhaling germs.

I had been told, that evening, that I should meet with hospitality at the house of a Frenchman who lived in an orange grove at the end of a promontory.  Who was he?  I did not know.  He had come there one morning ten years before, and had bought land which he planted with vines and sowed with grain.  He had worked, this man, with passionate energy, with fury.  Then as he went on from month to month, year to year, enlarging his boundaries, cultivating incessantly the strong virgin soil, he accumulated a fortune by his indefatigable labor.