“Never mind; we will return to my clients.  This one”—­and he touched the portrait of the bejewelled woman—­” is, as you have divined already, a widow, a very amiable widow.  Perhaps she is a little older than you are, but that is nothing.  Your experience must have taught you that the man who wishes to be loved, tenderly loved, pampered, caressed, spoiled, should marry a woman older than himself, who will treat him as a husband and as a son.  Her first husband was a careful merchant, who, had he lived, would have made a large fortune in the butcher business”—­he mumbled this word instead of pronouncing it clearly—­“but although he died just at the time when his affairs were beginning to develop, he left twenty thousand pounds’ income to his wife.  As I have told you what is good, I must tell you what is to be regretted.  Carried away by gay companions, this intelligent man became addicted to intemperance, and from drinking at saloons she soon took to drinking at home, and his wife drank with him.  I have every reason to believe that she has reformed; but, if it is otherwise, you, a doctor, can easily cure her—­”

“You believe it?”

“Without doubt.  However, if it is impossible, you need only let her alone, and her vice will soon carry her off; and, as the contract will be made according to my wishes in view of such an event, you will find yourself invested with a fortune and unencumbered with a wife.”

“And the other?” Saniel said, who had listened silently to this curious explanation of the situation that Caffie made with the most perfect good-nature.  So grave were the circumstances that he could not help being amused at this diplomacy.

“I expected your demand,” replied the agent with a shrewd smile.  “And if I spoke of this amiable widow it was rather to acquit my conscience than with any hope of succeeding.  However free from prejudices one may be, one always retains a few.  I understand yours, and more than that, I share them.  Happily, what I am now about to tell you is something quite different.  Take her photograph, my dear sir, and look at it while I talk.  A charming face, is it not?  She has been finely educated at a fashionable convent.  In a word, a pearl, that you shall wear.  And now I must tell you the flaw, for there is one.  Who is blameless?  The daughter of one of our leading actresses, after leaving the convent she returned to live with her mother.  It was there, in this environment-ahem! ahem!—­that an accident happened to her.  To be brief, she has a sweet little child that the father would have recognized assuredly, had he not been already married.  But at least he has provided for its future by an endowment of two hundred thousand francs, in such a way that whoever marries the mother and legitimizes the child will enjoy the interest of this sum until the child’s majority.  If that ever arrives—­these little creatures are so fragile!  You being a physician, you know more about that than any one.  In case of an accident