In that gigantic concentration of egotism which under Napoleon is called the State, Dalibard has found his place.

He has served to swell the power of the unit, and the cipher gains importance by its position in the sum.
Jean Bellanger is no more.

He died, not suddenly, and yet of some quick disease,--nervous exhaustion; his schemes, they said, had worn him out.
But the state of Dalibard, though prosperous, is not that of the heir to the dead millionnaire.

What mistake is this?
The bulk of that wealth must go to the nearest kin,--so runs the law.

But the will is read; and, for the first time, Olivier Dalibard learns that the dead man had a son,--a son by a former marriage,--the marriage undeclared, unknown, amidst the riot of the Revolution; for the wife was the daughter of a proscrit.