Those who truly love know that considerations of money count for little in matters of feeling and are reluctantly associated with them.

Nevertheless, Josephine did not hear without distress that her husband had borrowed three hundred thousand francs upon his property.

The apparent authenticity of the transaction, the rumors and conjectures spread through the town, forced Madame Claes, naturally much alarmed, to question her husband's notary and, disregarding her pride, to reveal to him her secret anxieties or let him guess them, and even ask her the humiliating question,-- "How is it that Monsieur Claes has not told you of this ?" Happily, the notary was almost a relation,--in this wise: The grandfather of Monsieur Claes had married a Pierquin of Antwerp, of the same family as the Pierquins of Douai.

Since the marriage the latter, though strangers to the Claes, claimed them as cousins.

Monsieur Pierquin, a young man twenty-six years of age, who had just succeeded to his father's practice, was the only person who now had access to the House of Claes.
Madame Balthazar had lived for several months in such complete solitude that the notary was obliged not only to confirm the rumor of the disasters, but to give her further particulars, which were now well known throughout the town.