Chesnel's eyes were dim; he could scarcely keep back the
tears. There was but one way of raising the money; he must mortgage
his own lands up to their full value. But when du Croisier learned the
difficulty in the way of repayment, he forgot that he was hard
pressed; he no longer wanted ready money, and suddenly came out with a
proposal to buy the old lawyer's property. The sale was completed
within two days. Poor Chesnel could not bear the thought of the son of
the house undergoing a five years' imprisonment for debt. So in a few
days' time nothing remained to him but his practice, the sums that
were due to him, and the house in which he lived. Chesnel, stripped of
all his lands, paced to and fro in his private office, paneled with
dark oak, his eyes fixed on the beveled edges of the chestnut
cross-beams of the ceiling, or on the trellised vines in the garden
outside. He was not thinking of his farms now, or of Le Jard, his dear
house in the country; not he.
"What will become of him? He ought to come back; they must marry him
to some rich heiress," he said to himself; and his eyes were dim, his
head heavy.
How to approach Mlle. Armande, and in what words to break the news to
her, he did not know. The man who had just paid the debts of the
family quaked at the thought of confessing these things.
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