This oath satisfied the good woman.

She recited, before the notary, the lesson which it had pleased her son to teach her.

On the following day the young man made her place her name at the foot of a document in which she acknowledged having received fifty thousand francs as the price of the property.

This was his stroke of genius, the act of a rogue.

He contented himself with telling his mother, who was a little surprised at signing such a receipt when she had not seen a centime of the fifty thousand francs, that it was a pure formality of no consequence whatever.