This altercation occurred while Gaston was in the madder-field trying to escape his pursuers.

After a while the gendarmes and hussars returned, with slow tread and sad faces, to say that Gaston de Clameran had plunged into the Rhone, and was instantly drowned.

This melancholy news was received with groans and tears by everyone save Louis, who remained calm and unmoved:  not a single muscle of his face quivered.

But his eyes sparkled with triumph.  A secret voice cried within him, “Now you are assured of the family fortune, and a marquis’s coronet.”

He was no longer the poverty-stricken younger son, but the sole heir of the Clamerans.

The corporal of the gendarmes had said: 

“I would not be the one to tell the poor old man that his son is drowned.”

Louis felt none of the tender-hearted scruples of the brave old soldier.  He instantly went to his father’s sick-room, and said, in a firm voice: 

“My brother had to choose between disgrace and death; he is dead.”

Like a sturdy oak stricken by lightning, the marquis tottered and fell when these fatal words sounded in his ears.  The doctor soon arrived, but alas! only to say that science was of no avail.

Toward daybreak, Louis, without a tear, received his father’s last sigh.

Louis was now the master.

All the unjust precautions taken by the marquis to elude the law, and insure beyond dispute the possession of his entire fortune to his eldest son, turned against him.

By means of a fraudulent deed of trust drawn by his dishonest lawyer, M. de Clameran had disposed everything so that, on the day of his death, every farthing he owned would be Gaston’s.

Louis alone was benefited by this precaution.  He came into possession without even being called upon for the certificate of his brother’s death.

He was now Marquis of Clameran; he was free, he was comparatively rich.  He who had never had twenty-five crowns in his pocket at once, now found himself the possessor of two hundred thousand francs.

This sudden, unexpected fortune so completely turned his head that he forgot his skilful dissimulation.  His demeanor at the funeral of the marquis was much censured.  He followed the coffin, with his head bowed and his face buried in a handkerchief; but this did not conceal the buoyancy of his spirit, and the joy which sparkled in his eyes.

The day after the funeral, Louis sold everything that he could dispose of, horses, carriages, and family plate.

The next day he discharged all the old servants, who had hoped to end their days beneath the hospitable roof of Clameran.  Several, with tears in their eyes, took him aside, and entreated him to let them stay without wages.  He roughly ordered them to be gone, and never appear before his eyes again.

He sent for his father’s lawyer, and gave him a power of attorney to sell the estate, and received in return the sum of twenty thousand francs as the first payment in advance.