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The Count’s revenge against Danglars began more quietly . The banker liked to buy and sell government bonds , and his wife often told him secret news which she heard from her friend Debray at the ministry . The Count paid a poor man who worked a telegraph tower outside Paris to send a false message . It said that Don Carlos , who claimed the Spanish throne , had escaped from France and gone back to Spain . Danglars believed the news and sold all his Spanish bonds in a panic . The next day the newspapers said that the message had been a mistake , and the price of the bonds went up again . The banker had lost half a million francs in a single day . It was only the beginning . X . Valentine The king’s attorney had a daughter from his first marriage . Her name was Valentine , and she was nineteen , with chestnut hair , blue eyes and a gentle smile . Her mother had died young , and her stepmother did not love her , because all that woman’s love was for her own son , Edward . He was a spoiled and cruel little boy who once pulled the feathers out of a living parrot’s tail to decorate his hat . Valentine was rich because her mother had left her a fortune . One day she would also receive the money of her grandparents , the Marquis and Marquise de Saint - Méran , and probably the money of her other grandfather , old Monsieur Noirtier . Edward , on the other hand , had almost nothing of his own . Old Noirtier lived in his son’s house . He had once been a dangerous enemy of the king , and he was still as clever as ever , but now he could not move his body or speak . He could only move his eyes . When he wanted to say yes , he closed them , and when he wanted to say no , he blinked many times . Valentine knew what he meant better than anyone , and she loved him dearly . The girl had a secret . In the evenings she walked to the end of the garden , where there was an old wooden gate in the wall . On the other side of the gate , Maximilian Morrel was waiting for her . They had met by chance some months earlier , and now they loved each other . But they could only talk through the gate , because her father wanted her to marry a young nobleman called Franz d’Épinay . She hardly knew Franz , but her father had already given his word . “ If they make you marry him , ” Morrel said one evening , “ I shall die . ” “ Do not say that , ” she answered . “ Have courage . My grandfather loves me , and I shall tell him the whole story . ” When she told the old man , his eyes shone . On the day when the marriage contract was to be signed , he asked to see Franz . He made Valentine take an old paper from his desk and give it to the young man to read aloud . The paper described a winter night in 1815 , when General de Quesnel , a loyal friend of the king , had been invited to a secret meeting of Napoleon’s friends . He had refused to join them . On his way home he had fought a duel by the river with the head of the club , and he had been killed .
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