This long-headed parent had never mentioned his income to his
children, who, seeing that he lived in a cheap way, reflected that he
had deprived himself of his property for their sakes, and, therefore,
redoubled their attentions and tenderness. In fact, he would sometimes
say to his sons:--

"Don't lose your property; remember, I have none to leave you."

Camusot, in whom he recognized a certain likeness to his own nature,
and whom he liked enough to make a sharer in his secret pleasures,
alone knew of the thirty thousand a year annuity. But Camusot approved
of the old man's ethics, and thought that, having made the happiness
of his children and nobly fulfilled his duty by them, he now had a
right to end his life jovially.

"Don't you see, my friend," said the former master of the Cocon d'Or,
"I might re-marry. A young woman would give me more children. Well,
Florentine doesn't cost me what a wife would; neither does she bore
me; and she won't give me children to lessen your property."

Camusot considered that Pere Cardot gave expression to a high sense
of family duty in these words; he regarded him as an admirable
father-in-law.

"He knows," thought he, "how to unite the interests of his children
with the pleasures which old age naturally desires after the worries
of business life."

Neither the Cardots, nor the Camusots, nor the Protez knew anything of