At the proper age of thirty-one, the Comte de Bonzag fell heir to the
enormous sum of fifteen thousand francs from an uncle who had made the
fortune in trade. With no more delay than it took the great Emperor to
fling an army across the Alps, he descended on Paris, resolved to
repulse all advances which Louis Napoleon might make, and to lend the
splendor of his name and the weight of his fortune only to the Cercle
Royale. Two weeks devoted to this loyal end strengthened the Bourbon
lines perceptibly, but resulted in a shrinkage of four thousand francs
in his own. Next remembering that the aristocracy had always been the
patron of the arts, he determined to make a rapid examination of the
_coulisses_ of the opera and the regions of the ballet. A six-days'
reconnaissance discovered not the slightest signs of disaffection; but
the thoroughness of his inquiries was such that the completion of his
mission found him with just one thousand francs in pocket. Being not
only a Loyalist and a patron of the arts, but a statesman and a
philosopher, he turned his efforts toward the Quartier Latin, to the
great minds who would one day take up the guidance of a more enlightened
France. There he made the discovery that one amused himself more than at
the Cercle Royale, and spent considerably less than in the arts, and
that at one hundred francs a week he aroused an enthusiasm for the
Bourbons which almost attained the proportions of a riot.
The three months over, he retired to his estate at Keragouil, having
profoundly stirred all classes of society, given new life to the cause
of His Majesty, and regretting only, as a true gentleman, the frightful
devastation he had left in the hearts of the ladies.
Unfortunately, these brilliant services to Parisian society and his king
had left him without any society of his own, forced to the consideration
of the difficult problem of how to keep his pipe lighted, his cellar
full, and his maid-of-all-work in a state of hopeful expectation, on
nothing a year.
Nothing daunted, he attacked this problem of the family bankruptcy with
the vigor and the daring of a D'Artagnan. Each year he collected
laboriously twenty francs, and invested them in two tickets for the
Great Lottery, valiantly resolved, like a Gascon, to carry off both
first and second prizes, but satisfied as a philosopher if he could
figure among the honorable mentions. Despite the fact that one hundred
and forty-five prizes were advertised each year, in nineteen attempts he
had not even had the pleasure of seeing his name in print. This result,
far from discouraging him, only inflamed his confidence. For he had
dipped into mathematics, and consoled himself by the reflection that,
according to the law of probabilities, each year he became the more
irresistible.
Lately, however, one obstacle had arisen to the successful carrying out
of this system of finance. He employed one servant, a maid-of-all-work,
who was engaged for the day, with permission to take from the garden
what she needed, to adorn herself from the rose-bushes, to share the
output of La Belle Etoile, the cow, and to receive a salary of ten
francs a month. The difficulty invariably arose over the interpretation
of this last clause. For the Comte was not regular in his payments,
unless it could be said that he was regular in not paying at all.
So it invariably occurred that the maid-of-all-work from a state of
unrest gradually passed into open rebellion, especially when the garden
was not productive and the roses ceased to bloom. When the ultimatum was
served, the Comte consulted his resources and found them invariably to
consist of two tickets of the Lottery of France, cash value twenty
francs, but, according to the laws of probability, increasingly capable
of returning one million, five hundred thousand francs. On one side was
the glory of the ancient name, and the possibility of another descent on
Paris; opposed was the brutal question of soup and ragout. The man
prevailed, and the maid-of-all-work grudgingly accepted the conditions
of truce. Then the news of the drawing arrived and the domestic staff
departed.
This comedy, annually repeated, was annually played on the same lines.
Only each year the period intervening between the surrender of the
tickets and the announcement of the lottery brought an increasing agony.
Each time as the Comte saw the precious slips finally depart in the
hands of the maid-of-all-work, he was convinced that at last the laws of
probability must fructify. Each year he found a new meaning in the
cabalistic mysteries of numbers. The eighteenth attempt, multiplied by
three, gave fifty-four, his age. Success was inevitable: nineteen, a
number indivisible and chaste above all others, seemed specially
designated. In a word, the Comte suffered during these periods as only a
gambler of the fourth generation is able to suffer.
At present the number twenty appeared to him to have properties no
other number had possessed, especially in the reappearance of the zero,
a figure which peculiarly attracted him by its symmetry. His despair was
consequently unlimited.
Ordinarily the news of the lottery arrived by an inspector of roads, who
passed through Keragouil a week or so after the announcement in the
press; for the Comte, having surrendered his ticket, was only troubled
lest he had won.
This time, to the upsetting of all history, an Englishman on a bicycle
trip brought him a newspaper, an article almost unknown to Keragouil,
where the shriek of the locomotive had yet to penetrate.
The Comte de Bonzag, opening the paper with the accustomed sinking of
the heart, was startled by the staring headlines: