THERE WAS one man in Grasse, however, who did not trust this peace. His name was Antoine Richis, he held the title of second consul, and he lived in a grand residence at the entrance to the rue Droite.

Richis was a widower and had a daughter named Laure. Although not yet forty years old and of undi-minished vigor, he intended to put off a second marriage for some time yet. First he wanted to find a husband for his daughter. And not the first comer, either, but a man of rank. There was a baron de Bouyon who had a son and an estate near Vence, a man of good reputation and miserable financial situation, with whom Richis had already concluded a contract concerning the future marriage of their children. Once he had married Laure off, he planned to put out his own courting feelers in the direction of the highly esteemed houses of Dree, Maubert, or Fontmichel-not because he was vain and would be damned if he didn’t get a noble bedmate, but because he wanted to found a dynasty and to put his own posterity on a track leading directly to the highest social and political influence. For that he needed at least two sons, one to take over his business, the other to pursue a law career leading to the parliament in Aix and advancement to the nobility. Given his present rank, however, he could hold out hopes for such success only if he managed intimately to unite his own person and family with provincial nobility.

Only one thing justified such high-soaring plans: his fabulous wealth. Antoine Richis was far and away the wealthiest citizen anywhere around. He possessed latifundia not only in the area of Grasse, where he planted oranges, oil, wheat, and hemp, but also near Vence and over toward Antibes, where he leased out his farms. He owned houses in Aix and houses in the country, owned shares in ships that traded with India, had a permanent office in Genoa, and was the largest wholesaler for scents, spices, oils, and leathers in France.

The most precious thing that Richis possessed, however, was his daughter. She was his only child, just turned sixteen, with auburn hair and green eyes. She had a face so charming that visitors of all ages and both sexes would stand stockstill at the sight of her, unable to pull their eyes away, practically licking that face with their eyes, the way tongues work at ice cream, with that typically stupid, single-minded expression on their faces that goes with concentrated licking. Even Richis would catch himself looking at his daughter for indefinite periods of time, a quarter of an hour, a half hour perhaps, forgetting the rest of the world, even his business-which otherwise did not happen even in his sleep-melting away in contemplation of this magnificent girl and afterwards unable to say what it was he had been doing. And of late-he noticed this with uneasiness-of an evening, when he brought her to her bed or sometimes of a morning when he went in to waken her and she still lay sleeping as if put to rest by God&rsqu............