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M. de Valorsay felt that he must have time to regain his mental equilibrium--to look his situation calmly in the face.  It was a frightful one, for his ruin was complete, absolute.  He could save nothing from the wreck.  What was to become of him?  What could he do?  He set his wits to work; but he found that he was incapable of plying any kind of avocation.  All the energy he had been endowed with by nature had been squandered--exhausted in pandering to his self-conceit.  If he had been younger he might have turned soldier; but at his age he had not even this resource.  Then it was that his notary's smile recurred to his mind.  "His advice was decidedly good," he muttered.  "All is not yet lost; one way of escape still remains--marriage."

And why, indeed, shouldn't he marry, and marry a rich wife too?  No one knew anything about his misfortune; for a year at least, he would retain all the advantages that wealth bestows upon its possessor.  His name alone was a great advantage.  It would be very strange if he could not find some manufacturer's or banker's daughter who would be only too delighted to have a marquisial coronet emblazoned on her carriage panels.

Having arrived at this conclusion, M. de Valorsay began his search, and it was not long before he thought he had found what he was seeking.  But something was still necessary.  The bestowers of large dowers are inclined to be suspicious; they like to have a clear understanding as to the financial position of the suitors who present themselves, and they not unfrequently ask for information.  Accordingly, before committing himself, M. de Valorsay understood that it was necessary he should provide himself with an intelligent and devoted adviser.  There must be some one to hold his creditors in check, to silence them, and obtain sundry concessions from them--in a word, some one to interest them in his success.  With this object in view, M. de Valorsay applied to his notary; but the latter utterly refused to mix himself up in any such affair, and declared that the marquis's suggestion was almost an insult.  Then touched, perhaps, by his client's apparent despair, he said, "But I can mention a person who might be of service to you.  Go to M. Isidore Fortunat, No. 27 Place de la Bourse.  If you succeed in interesting him in your marriage, it is an accomplished fact."

It was under these circumstances that the marquis became acquainted with M. Fortunat.  M. de Valorsay was a man of no little penetration, and on his first visit he carefully weighed his new acquaintance.  He found him to be the very counsellor he desired--prudent, and at the same time courageous; fertile in expedients; a thorough master of the art of evading the law, and not at all troubled by scruples.  With such an adviser, it would be mere child's play to conceal his financial embarrassments and deceive the most suspicious father-in-law.  So M. de Valorsay did not hesitate a moment.  He frankly disclosed his pecuniary condition and his matrimonial hopes, and concluded by promising M. Fortunat a certain percentage on the bride's dowry, to be paid on the day following the marriage.

After a prolonged conference, the agreement was drawn up and signed, and that very day M. Fortunat took the nobleman's interests in hand.  How heartily, and with what confidence in his success, is shown by the fact that he had advanced forty thousand francs for his client's use, out of his own private purse.  After such a proof of confidence the marquis could hardly have been dissatisfied with his adviser; in point of fact, he was delighted with him, and all the more so, as this invaluable man always treated him with extreme deference, verging on servility.  And in M. de Valorsay's eyes this was a great consideration; for he was becoming more arrogant and more irascible in proportion as his right to be so diminished.  Secretly disgusted with himself, and deeply humiliated by the shameful intrigue to which he had stooped, he took a secret satisfaction in crushing his accomplice with his imaginary superiority and lordly disdain.  According as his humor was good or bad, he called him "my dear extortioner," "Mons. Fortunat," or "Master Twenty-per-cent." But though these sneers and insults drove the obsequious smile from M. Fortunat's lips, he was quite capable of including them in the bill under the head of sundries.

The unvarying deference and submission which M. de Valorsay's adviser displayed made his failure to keep the present appointment all the more remarkable.  Such neglect of the commonest rules of courtesy was inconceivable on the part of so polite a man; and the marquis's anger gradually changed to anxiety.  "What can have happened?" he thought.

He was trying to decide whether he should leave or stay, when he heard a key grate in the lock of the outer door, and then some quick steps along the ante-room. "At last--here he is!" he muttered, with a sigh of relief.

He expected to see M. Fortunat enter the room at once, but he was disappointed.  The agent had no desire to show himself in the garb which he had assumed for his excursion with Chupin; and so he had hastened to his room to don his wonted habiliments.  He also desired a few moments for deliberation.

If--as was most probably the case--M. de Valorsay were ignorant of the Count de Chalusse's critical condition, was it advisable to tell him of it?  M. Fortunat thought not, judging with reason that this would lead to a discussion and very possibly to a rupture, and he wished to avoid anything of the kind until he was quite certain of the count's death.