The Nemours mail-coach service requires a large number of horses.

It goes to Fontainebleau on the road to Paris, and from there diverges to Montargis and also to Montereau.

The relays are long, and the sandy soil of the Montargis road calls for the mythical third horse, always paid for but never seen.

A man of Minoret's build, and Minoret's wealth, at the head of such an establishment might well be called, without contradiction, the master of Nemours.

Though he never thought of God or devil, being a practical materialist, just as he was a practical agriculturist, a practical egoist, and a practical miser, Minoret had enjoyed up to this time a life of unmixed happiness,--if we can call pure materialism happiness.