After Oliver had gone home, the marquis lingered for a moment or two in madame's apartment, standing with his back to the fireplace listening while she talked to him.
[Illustration: "ENTER OLIVER AND MADEMOISELLE CÉLESTE."]
"I do not like him," said she; "he is ostentatious. Who ever heard of wearing diamond knee and shoe buckles in the country? The solitaire pin in his cravat was enormous."
"It was a magnificent diamond," said the marquis.
"He is an adventurer," replied the marquise.
The marquis felt in his waistcoat pocket, and brought out the two diamonds that Oliver had given him. He held them in the palm of his hand under the nose of the marquise. "Bah!" said he; "you talk like a fool, Matilde. Do adventurers, then, give away seventy-five thousand livres' worth of diamonds as though they were chestnuts? Did you ever hear of an adventurer who carried around a half a million livres' worth of diamonds in a little box? No; he may not be an aristocrat, but he is certainly an Aladdin."
So Oliver was made welcome at the château whenever he chose to come. By the time that a month had passed, he had grown into a certain intimacy. They all liked him; even madame had condoned his diamonds and liked him. Then one morning the marquis received an astounding letter from his protégé.
"Monseigneur," it said, "I recognize in you a true and kind friend, a man of the world upon whom I can depend." (Oliver's master in Paris had done wonders for him; he really wrote very well.) "I am, monseigneur, troubled and harassed. I am young and without experience. I now have with me here my whole fortune, which consists entirely of diamonds--the gleaning of years from my American uncle's mines in Brazil. I do not think that I overestimate, monseigneur, in saying that that fortune is worth--" (I will not repeat what the figures were, they were so tremendous, so unbelievable, that the marquis laid the letter down, and gazed around him bewildered. "If this is true," said he, drawing a deep breath, "my young friend is the richest man in France." Thereupon he picked up the letter, and read the figures over again, and then over again. "He must have made a mistake of a cipher," said the marquis. But no; the amount was not only given in numbers, but written out in full--there could be no mistake. The marquis resumed the reading of the epistle.) "I am," continued the letter, "tormented with fears at having this vast amount in my house"--"I should think so," muttered the marquis to himself--"which, though at present a profound secret, may at any time be discovered. What dangers I would then be in, I leave you to judge for yourself. I have, monseigneur, no friends, no relatives, of sufficient age and experience to advise me in my difficulties. Accordingly I turn to you, who have shown me so much kindness, and beseech you that you will so far continue it--I may say increase it--as to take charge of this treasure, and advise me as to how I may best dispose of it."