The landowner lights his pipe and seats himself cross-legged against the
trunk of the big chestnut. Back of the house the vineyard slopes away
toward the distant woods in straight, green, trellised alleys. A dim
haze hangs over the landscape sleeping so quietly in the midsummer
afternoon. Down the road comes heavily, creaking and swaying, a wain
loaded with a huge tower of empty casks and drawn by two oxen, their
heads swinging to the dust. Yes, it is hard to _comprendre_ twenty-five
hundred million francs.

It was this way. Madame Lapierre was a Tessier of Bordeaux--an ancient
_bourgeois_ family, and very proud indeed of being _bourgeois_. You can
see her passing and repassing the window if you watch carefully the
kitchen, where she is superintending dinner. The Tessiers have always
lived in Bordeaux and they are connected by marriage with
everybody--from the blacksmith up to the Mayor's notary. Once a Tessier
was Mayor himself. Years and years ago Madame's great-uncle Jean had
emigrated to America, and from time to time vague rumors of the wealth
he had achieved in the new country reached the ears of his
relatives--but no direct word ever came.

Then one hot day--like this--appeared M. le Général. He came walking
down the road in the dust from the _gare_, in his tall silk hat and
frock coat and gold-headed cane, and stopped before the house to ask if
one of the descendants of a certain Jean Tessier did not live
hereabouts. He was fat and red-faced, and he perspired, but--_Dieu_!--he
was _distingué_, and he had an order in his buttonhole. Madame Lapierre,
who came out to answer his question, knew at once that he was an
aristocrat.