But," she added mournfully, "it is easier to believe that than to believe what is the truth." "Then what is it ?" said Rabourdin.
"All in three words," she said; "I owe thirty thousand francs." Rabourdin caught his wife to his heart with a gesture of almost frantic joy, and seated her on his knee.
"Take comfort, dear," he said, in a tone of voice so adorably kind that the bitterness of her grief was changed to something inexpressibly tender.

"I too have made mistakes; I have worked uselessly for my country when I thought I was being useful to her.

But now I mean to take another path.

If I had sold groceries we should now be millionaires.
Well, let us be grocers.

You are only twenty-eight, dear angel; in ten years you shall recover the luxury that you love, which we must needs renounce for a short time.