As he listened to these conversations among the merchants, he foresaw the means of fortune, and without loss of time he set about making himself the owner of landed property, a banker, and a shipping-merchant.

He bought land and houses in the town, and despatched a vessel to New York freighted with silks purchased in Lyons at reduced prices.

He sent Dumay on the ship as his agent; and when the latter returned, after making a double profit by the sale of the silks and the purchase of cottons at a low valuation, he found the colonel installed with his family in the handsomest house in the rue Royale, and studying the principles of banking with the prodigious activity and intelligence of a native of Provence.
This double operation of Dumay's was worth a fortune to the house of Mignon.

The colonel purchased the villa at Ingouville and rewarded his agent with the gift of a modest little house in the rue Royale.

The poor toiler had brought back from New York, together with his cottons, a pretty little wife, attracted it would seem by his French nature.