The Count's Millions

The Count's Millions, by Émile Gaboriau, is described as a novel in two parts. The story opens on a Thursday evening, the fifteenth of October, when the servants at the Hotel de Chalusse, one of the most magnificent mansions in the Rue de Courcelles in Paris, are assembled in the porter’s lodge. A character named Mademoiselle Marguerite has a search made in M. de Chalusse’s pocket for the key of his escritoire, and breaks the key into fragments with a heavy blow of the hammer. The servants say to themselves that it would not do to touch the escritoire of a dying man, and ask who knows but what there are millions in it.

A first-person account tells of arrangements to enter the convent of Sainte-Marthe, with letters to be sent to an address given by another person, who would sign his answers with a fictitious name. A letter signed ATHENAIS DE FONDEGE tells its reader that in the writer's heart the reader will fill the place of the beloved and lamented daughter the writer has lost.