The latter, named Sarcus, had a salary of fifteen hundred francs, and was married to a woman without fortune, the eldest sister of Monsieur Vermut, the apothecary of Soulanges.

Though an only daughter, Mademoiselle Sarcus, whose beauty was her only dowry, could scarcely have lived on the salary paid to a notary's clerk in the provinces.
Young Sibilet, a relative of Gaubertin, by a connection rather difficult to trace through family ramifications which make members of the middle classes in all the smaller towns cousins to each other, owed a modest position in a government office to the assistance of his father and Gaubertin.

The unlucky fellow had the terrible happiness of being the father of two children in three years.

His own father, blessed with five, was unable to assist him.

His wife's father owned nothing beside his house at Soulanges and an income of two thousand francs.