Two days after, the sale was ended. It had produced 3.50,000 francs. The
creditors divided among them two thirds, and the family, a sister and a
grand-nephew, received the remainder.
The sister opened her eyes very wide when the lawyer wrote to her that
she had inherited 50,000 francs. The girl had not seen her sister for
six or seven years, and did not know what had become of her from the
moment when she had disappeared from home. She came up to Paris in
haste, and great was the astonishment of those who had known Marguerite
when they saw as her only heir a fine, fat country girl, who until then
had never left her village. She had made the fortune at a single stroke,
without even knowing the source of that fortune. She went back, I heard
afterward, to her countryside, greatly saddened by her sister's death,
but with a sadness which was somewhat lightened by the investment at
four and a half per cent which she had been able to make.
All these circumstances, often repeated in Paris, the mother city of
scandal, had begun to be forgotten, and I was even little by little
forgetting the part I had taken in them, when a new incident brought to
my knowledge the whole of Marguerite's life, and acquainted me with
such pathetic details that I was taken with the idea of writing down the
story which I now write.
The rooms, now emptied of all their furniture, had been to let for three
or four days when one morning there was a ring at my door.
My servant, or, rather, my porter, who acted as my servant, went to the
door and brought me a card, saying that the person who had given it to
him wished to see me.
I glanced at the card and there read these two words: Armand Duval.
I tried to think where I had seen the name, and remembered the first
leaf of the copy of Manon Lescaut. What could the person who had given
the book to Marguerite want of me? I gave orders to ask him in at once.
I saw a young man, blond, tall, pale, dressed in a travelling suit which
looked as if he had not changed it for some days, and had not even taken
the trouble to brush it on arriving at Paris, for it was covered with
dust.
M. Duval was deeply agitated; he made no attempt to conceal his
agitation, and it was with tears in his eyes and a trembling voice that
he said to me: "Sir, I beg you to excuse my visit and my costume; but young people are
not very ceremonious with one another, and I was so anxious to see you
to-day that I have not even gone to the hotel to which I have sent my
luggage, and have rushed straight here, fearing that, after all, I might
miss you, early as it is."