The Count seemed moved; then he turned to De Brie, who was seated some distance away, in a deep armchair, with a pencil in one hand and a pad in the other, and said, "Eh! What are you doing there, a sketch in the manner of the author of the Pictionnaire classique?"
"Oh oui, bien, a sketch! I love too much the art of painting for that. I am doing the opposite of sketching, I am engaged in financial accounting. This concerns you directly, viscount; I am calculating what the Sacqueville-Danglars house gained on the last increase in Ouestmarchais real estate. The prudent banker must have gained three hundred thousand aragons de mithril in one day."
"Ah morgot! Sacqueville-Danglars plays to win or lose three hundred thousand aragons in a day!" exclaimed Monte Fato. "Ah çà! but he is enormously rich?"
"It is not he who plays, but the baroness," cried Lothien vivaciously. "She is veritably intrepid. More than once she has gambled an entire tobacco plantation for a set of mithrile spoons. On one such occasion, Boyen-Xènes-Baguines was so shocked at her casual attitude towards her tobacco plantations that he fainted and was a day late in reporting the news."
"You, who are reasonable, and know the news, since you are at the source, could restrain her," said the viscount de Pérégrin.
