As I walked home, just now, I asked myself what could be your influence over me to make me commit such a crime, and whether the happiness of belonging to your family and becoming your son could ever efface the stain I have put upon my conscience." "Bah! you can confess it," said Thuillier, the free-thinker.
"And now," said Theodose to Brigitte, "you can pay, in all security, the cost of the house,--eighty thousand francs, and thirty thousand to Grindot; in all, with what you have paid in costs, one hundred and twenty thousand; and this last twenty thousand added make one hundred and forty thousand.

If you let the house outright to a single tenant ask him for the last year's rent in advance, and reserve for my wife and me the whole of the first floor above the entresol.

Make those conditions and you'll still get your forty thousand francs a year.

If you should want to leave this quarter so as to be nearer the Chamber, you can always take up your abode with us on that vast first floor, which has stables and coach-house belonging to it; in fact, everything that is needful for a splendid life.

And now, Thuillier, I am going to get the cross of the Legion of honor for you." Hearing this last promise, Brigitte cried out in her enthusiasm:-- "Faith! my dear boy, you've done our business so well that I'll leave you to manage that of letting the house." "Don't abdicate, dear aunt," replied Theodose.