Angele, however, adored sky-blue ribbons and roast beef.

She was the daughter of a retired captain who was called Commander Sicardot, a good-hearted old gentleman, who had given her a dowry of ten thousand francs--all his savings.

Pierre, in selecting Angele for his son had considered that he had made an unexpected bargain, so lightly did he esteem Aristide.
However, that dowry of ten thousand francs, which determined his choice, ultimately became a millstone round his neck.

His son, who was already a cunning rogue, deposited the ten thousand francs with his father, with whom he entered into partnership, declining, with the most sincere professions of devotion, to keep a single copper.
"We have no need of anything," he said; "you will keep my wife and myself, and we will reckon up later on." Pierre was short of money at the time, and accepted, not, however, without some uneasiness at Aristide's disinterestedness.

The latter calculated that it would be years before his father would have ten thousand francs in ready money to repay him, so that he and his wife would live at the paternal expense so long as the partnership could not be dissolved.