From the night of her marriage, the charming and only daughter of the
banker Chevrel conceived for the unhappy notary an insurmountable
antipathy, and wished to apply at once for a divorce. But Roguin,
happy in obtaining a rich wife with five hundred thousand francs of
her own, to say nothing of expectations, entreated her not to
institute an action for divorce, promising to leave her free, and to
accept all the consequences of such an agreement. Madame Roguin thus
became sovereign mistress of the situation, and treated her husband as
a courtesan treats an elderly lover. Roguin soon found his wife too
expensive, and like other Parisian husbands he set up a private
establishment of his own, keeping the cost, in the first instance,
within the limits of moderate expenditure. In the beginning he
encountered, at no great expense, grisettes who were glad of his
protection; but for the past three years he had fallen a prey to one
of those unconquerable passions which sometimes invade the whole being
of a man between fifty and sixty years of age. It was roused by a
magnificent creature known as _la belle Hollandaise_ in the annals of
prostitution, for into that gulf she was to fall back and become a
noted personage through her death. She was originally brought from
Bruges by a client of Roguin, who soon after left Paris in consequence
of political events, presenting her to the notary in 1815. Roguin
bought a house for her in the Champs-Elysees, furnished it handsomely,
and in trying to satisfy her costly caprices had gradually eaten up
his whole fortune.

The gloomy look on the notary's face, which he hastened to lay aside
when he saw Birotteau, grew out of certain mysterious circumstances
which were at the bottom of the secret fortune so rapidly acquired by
du Tillet. The scheme originally planned by that adventurer had
changed on the first Sunday when he saw, at Birotteau's house, the