Other People's Money

Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer

OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY

By Emile Gaboriau

PART I

I

There is not, perhaps, in all Paris, a quieter street than the Rue St. Gilles in the Marais, within a step of the Place Royale. No carriages there; never a crowd. Hardly is the silence broken by the regulation drums of the Minims Barracks near by, by the chimes of the Church of St. Louis, or by the joyous clamors of the pupils of the Massin School during the hours of recreation.

At night, long before ten o’clock, and when the Boulevard Beaumarchais is still full of life, activity, and noise, every thing begins to close. One by one the lights go out, and the great windows with diminutive panes become dark. And if, after midnight, some belated citizen passes on his way home, he quickens his step, feeling lonely and uneasy, and apprehensive of the reproaches of his concierge, who is likely to ask him whence he may be coming at so late an hour.

In such a street, every one knows each other: houses have no mystery; families, no secrets,--a small town, where idle curiosity has always a corner of the veil slyly raised, where gossip flourishes as rankly as the grass on the street.

Thus on the afternoon of the 27th of April, 1872 (a Saturday), a fact which anywhere else might have passed unnoticed was attracting particular attention.

A man some thirty years of age, wearing the working livery of servants of the upper class,--the long striped waistcoat with sleeves, and the white linen apron,--was going from door to door.

“Who can the man be looking for?” wondered the idle neighbors, closely watching his evolutions.

He was not looking for any one. To such as he spoke to, he stated that he had been sent by a cousin of his, an excellent cook, who, before taking a place in the neighborhood, was anxious to have all possible information on the subject of her prospective masters. And then, “Do you know M. Vincent Favoral?” he would ask.

Concierges and shop-keepers knew no one better; for it was more than a quarter of a century before, that M. Vincent Favoral, the day after his wedding, had come to settle in the Rue St. Gilles; and there his two children were born,--his son M. Maxence, his daughter Mlle. Gilberte.

He occupied the second story of the house. No. 38,--one of those old-fashioned dwellings, such as they build no more, since ground is sold at twelve hundred francs the square metre; in which there is no stinting of space. The stairs, with wrought iron balusters, are wide and easy, and the ceilings twelve feet high.

“Of course, we know M. Favoral,” answered every one to the servant’s questions; “and, if there ever was an honest man, why, he is certainly the one. There is a man whom you could trust with your funds, if you had any, without fear of his ever running off to Belgium with them.” And it was further explained, that M. Favoral was chief cashier, and probably, also, one of the principal stockholders, of the Mutual Credit Society, one of those admirable financial institutions which have sprung up with the second empire, and which had won at the bourse the first installment of their capital, the very day that the game of the Coup d’Etat was being played in the street.

“I know well enough the gentleman’s business,” remarked the servant; “but what sort of a man is he? That’s what my cousin would like to know.”

The wine-man at No. 43, the oldest shop-keeper in the street, could best answer. A couple of petits-verres politely offered soon started his tongue; and, whilst sipping his Cognac:

“M. Vincent Favoral,” he began, “is a man some fifty-two or three years old, but who looks younger, not having a single gray hair. He is tall and thin, with neatly-trimmed whiskers, thin lips, and small yellow eyes; not talkative. It takes more ceremony to get a word from his throat than a dollar from his pocket. ‘Yes,’ ‘no,’ ‘good-morning,’ ‘good-evening;’ that’s about the extent of his conversation. Summer and winter, he wears gray pantaloons, a long frock-coat, laced shoes, and lisle-thread gloves. ‘Pon my word, I should say that he is still wearing the very same clothes I saw upon his back for the first time in 1845, did I not know that he has two full suits made every year by the concierge at No. 29, who is also a tailor.”

“Why, he must be an old miser,” muttered the servant.

“He is above all peculiar,” continued the shop-keeper, “like most men of figures, it seems. His own life is ruled and regulated like the pages of his ledger. In the neighborhood they call him Old Punctuality; and, when he passes through the Rue Turenne, the merchants set their watches by him. Rain or shine, every morning of the year, on the stroke of nine, he appears at the door on the way to his office. When he returns, you may be sure it is between twenty and twenty-five minutes past five. At six he dines; at seven he goes to play a game of dominoes at the Cafe Turc; at ten he comes home and goes to bed; and, at the first stroke of eleven at the Church of St. Louis, out goes his candle.”

“Hem!” grumbled the servant with a look of contempt, “the question is, will my cousin be willing to live with a man who is a sort of walking clock?”

“It isn’t always pleasant,” remarked the wine-man; “and the best evidence is, that the son, M. Maxence, got tired of it.”

“He does not live with his parents any more?”

“He dines with them; but he has his own lodgings on the Boulevard du Temple. The falling-out made talk enough at the time; and some people do say that M. Maxence is a worthless scamp, who leads a very dissipated life; but I say that his father kept him too close. The boy is twenty-five, quite good looking, and has a very stylish mistress: I have seen her. . . . I would have done just as he did.”

“And what about the daughter, Mlle. Gilberte?”

“She is not married yet, although she is past twenty, and pretty as a rosebud. After the war, her father tried to make her marry a stock-broker, a stylish man who always came in a two-horse carriage; but she refused him outright. I should not be a bit surprised to hear that she has some love-affair of her own. I have noticed lately a young gentleman about here who looks up quite suspiciously when he goes by No. 38.” The servant did not seem to find these particulars very interesting.

“It’s the lady,” he said, “that my cousin would like to know most about.”

“Naturally. Well, you can safely tell her that she never will have had a better mistress. Poor Madame Favoral! She must have had a sweet time of it with her maniac of a husband! But she is not young any more; and people get accustomed to every thing, you know. The days when the weather is fine, I see her going by with her daughter to the Place Royale for a walk. That’s about their only amusement.”

“The mischief!” said the servant, laughing. “If that is all, she won’t ruin her husband, will she?”

“That is all,” continued the shop-keeper, “or rather, excuse me, no: every Saturday, for many years, M. and Mme. Favoral receive a few of their friends: M. and Mme. Desclavettes, retired dealers in bronzes, Rue Turenne; M. Chapelain, the old lawyer from the Rue St. Antoine, whose daughter is Mlle. Gilberte’s particular friend; M. Desormeaux, head clerk in the Department of Justice; and three or four others; and as this just happens to be Saturday--”

But here he stopped short, and pointing towards the street:

“Quick,” said he, “look! Speaking of the--you know--It is twenty minutes past five, there is M. Favoral coming home.”

It was, in fact, the cashier of the Mutual Credit Society, looking very much indeed as the shop-keeper had described him. Walking with his head down, he seemed to be seeking upon the pavement the very spot upon which he had set his foot in the morning, that he might set it back again there in the evening.

With the same methodical step, he reached his house, walked up the two pairs of stairs, and, taking out his pass-key, opened the door of his apartment.

The dwelling was fit for the man; and every thing from the very hall, betrayed his peculiarities. There, evidently, every piece of furniture must have its invariable place, every object its irrevocable shelf or hook. All around were evidences, if not exactly of poverty, at least of small means, and of the artifices of a respectable economy. Cleanliness was carried to its utmost limits: every thing shone. Not a detail but betrayed the industrious hand of the housekeeper, struggling to defend her furniture against the ravages of time. The velvet on the chairs was darned at the angles as with the needle of a fairy. Stitches of new worsted showed through the faded designs on the hearth-rugs. The curtains had been turned so as to display their least worn side.

All the guests enumerated by the shop-keeper, and a few others besides, were in the parlor when M. Favoral came in. But, instead of returning their greeting:

“Where is Maxence?” he inquired.

“I am expecting him, my dear,” said Mme. Favoral gently.

“Always behind time,” he scolded. “It is too trifling.”

His daughter, Mlle. Gilberte, interrupted him:

“Where is my bouquet, father?” she asked.

M. Favoral stopped short, struck his forehead, and with the accent of a man who reveals something incredible, prodigious, unheard of,

“Forgotten,” he answered, scanning the syllables: “I have for-got-ten it.”

It was a fact. Every Saturday, on his way home, he was in the habit of stopping at the old woman’s shop in front of the Church of St. Louis, and buying a bouquet for Mlle. Gilberte. And to-day . . .

“Ah! I catch you this time, father!” exclaimed the girl.

Meantime, Mme. Favoral, whispering to Mme. Desclavettes:

“Positively,” she said in a troubled voice, “something serious must have happened to--my husband. He to forget! He to fail in one of his habits! It is the first time in twenty-six years.”

The appearance of Maxence at this moment prevented her from going on. M. Favoral was about to administer a sound reprimand to his son, when dinner was announced.

“Come,” exclaimed M. Chapelain, the old lawyer, the conciliating man par excellence,--“come, let us to the table.”

They sat down. But Mme. Favoral had scarcely helped the soup, when the bell rang violently. Almost at the same moment the servant appeared, and announced:

“The Baron de Thaller!”

More pale than his napkin, the cashier stood up. “The manager,” he stammered, “the director of the Mutual Credit Society.”

II

Close upon the heels of the servant M. de Thaller came.

Tall, thin, stiff, he had a very small head, a flat face, pointed nose, and long reddish whiskers, slightly shaded with silvery threads, falling half-way down his chest. Dressed in the latest style, he wore a loose overcoat of rough material, pantaloons that spread nearly to the tip of his boots, a wide shirt-collar turned over a light cravat, on the bow of which shone a large diamond, and a tall hat with rolled brims. With a blinking glance, he made a rapid estimate of the dining-room, the shabby furniture, and the guests seated around the table. Then, without even condescending to touch his hat, with his large hand tightly fitted into a lavender glove, in a brief and imperious tone, and with a slight accent which he affirmed was the Alsatian accent:

“I must speak with you, Vincent,” said he to his cashier, “alone and at once.”

M. Favoral made visible efforts to conceal his anxiety. “You see,”
he commenced, “we are dining with a few friends, and--”

“Do you wish me to speak in presence of everybody?” interrupted harshly the manager of the Mutual Credit.

The cashier hesitated no longer. Taking up a candle from the table, he opened the door leading to the parlor, and, standing respectfully to one side:

“Be kind enough to pass on, sir,” said he: “I follow you.”

And, at the moment of disappearing himself,

“Continue to dine without me,” said he to his guests, with a last effort at self-control. “I shall soon catch up with you. This will take but a moment. Do not be uneasy in the least.”

They were not uneasy, but surprised, and, above all, shocked at the manners of M. de Thaller.

“What a brute!” muttered Mme. Desclavettes.

M. Desormeaux, the head clerk at the Department of Justice, was an old legitimist, much imbued with reactionary ideas.

“Such are our masters,” said he with a sneer, “the high barons of financial feudality. Ah! you are indignant at the arrogance of the old aristocracy; well, on your knees, by Jupiter! on your face, rather, before the golden crown on field of gules.”

No one replied: every one was trying his best to hear.

In the parlor, between M. Favoral and M. de Thaller, a discussion of the utmost violence was evidently going on. To seize the meaning of it was not possible; and yet through the door, the upper panels of which were of glass, fragments could be heard; and from time to time such words distinctly reached the ear as dividend, stockholders, deficit, millions, etc.

“What can it all mean? great heaven!” moaned Mme. Favoral.

Doubtless the two interlocutors, the director and the cashier, had drawn nearer to the door of communication; for their voices, which rose more and more, had now become quite distinct.

“It is an infamous trap!” M. Favoral was saying. “I should have been notified--”

“Come, come,” interrupted the other. “Were you not fully warned? did I ever conceal any thing from you?”

Fear, a fear vague still, and unexplained, was slowly taking possession of the guests; and they remained motionless, their forks in suspense, holding their breath.

“Never,” M. Favoral was repeating, stamping his foot so violently that the partition shook,--“never, never!”

“And yet it must be,” declared M. de Thaller. “It is the only, the last resource.”

“And suppose I will not!”

“Your will has nothing to do with it now. It is twenty years ago that you might have willed, or not willed. But listen to me, and let us reason a little.”

Here M. de Thaller dropped his voice; and for some minutes nothing was heard in the dining-room, except confused words, and incomprehensible exclamations, until suddenly,

“That is ruin,” he resumed in a furious tone: “it is bankruptcy on the last of the month.”

“Sir,” the cashier was replying,--“sir!”

“You are a forger, M. Vincent Favoral; you are a thief!”

Maxence leaped from his seat.

“I shall not permit my father to be thus insulted in his own house,”
he exclaimed.

“Maxence,” begged Mme. Favoral, “my son!”

The old lawyer, M. Chapelain, held him by the arm; but he struggled hard, and was about to burst into the parlor, when the door opened, and the director of the Mutual Credit stepped out.

With a coolness quite remarkable after such a scene, he advanced towards Mlle. Gilberte, and, in a tone of offensive protection,

“Your father is a wretch, mademoiselle,” he said; “and my duty should be to surrender him at once into the hands of justice. On account of your worthy mother, however, of your father himself, above all, on your own account, mademoiselle, I shall forbear doing so. But let him fly, let him disappear, and never more be heard from.”

He drew from his pocket a roll of bank-notes, and, throwing them upon the table,

“Hand him this,” he added. “Let him leave this very night. The police may have been notified. There is a train for Brussels at five minutes past eleven.”

And, having bowed, he withdrew, no one addressing him a single word, so great was the astonishment of all the guests of this house, heretofore so peaceful.

Overcome with stupor, Maxence had dropped upon his chair. Mlle. Gilberte alone retained some presence of mind.

“It is a shame,” she exclaimed, “for us to give up thus! That man is an impostor, a wretch; he lies! Father, father!”

M. Favoral had not waited to be called, and was standing up against the parlor-door, pale as death, and yet calm.

“Why attempt any explanations?” he said. “The money is gone; and appearances are against me.”

His wife had drawn near to him, and taken his hand. “The misfortune is immense,” she said, “but not irreparable. We will sell everything we have.”

“Have you not friends? Are we not here,” insisted the others,--M. Desclavettes, M. Desormeaux, and M. Chapelain.

Gently he pushed his wife aside, and coldly.

“All we had,” he said, “would be as a grain of sand in an ocean. But we have no longer anything; we are ruined.”

“Ruined!” exclaimed M. Desormeaux,--“ruined! And where are the forty-five thousand francs I placed into your hands?”

He made no reply.

“And our hundred and twenty thousand francs?” groaned M. and Mme. Desclavettes.

“And my sixty thousand francs?” shouted M. Chapelain, with a blasphemous oath.

The cashier shrugged his shoulders. “Lost,” he said, “irrevocably lost!”

Then their rage exceeded all bounds. Then they forgot that this unfortunate man had been their friend for twenty years, that they were his guests; and they commenced heaping upon him threats and insults without name.

He did not even deign to defend himself.

“Go on,” he uttered, “go on. When a poor dog, carried away by the current, is drowning, men of heart cast stones at him from the bank. Go on!”

“You should have told us that you speculated,” screamed M. Desclavettes.

On hearing these words, he straightened himself up, and with a gesture so terrible that the others stepped back frightened.

“What!” said he, in a tone of crushing irony, “it is this evening only, that you discover that I speculated? Kind friends! Where, then, and in whose pockets, did you suppose I was getting the enormous interests I have been paying you for years? Where have you ever seen honest money, the money of labor, yield twelve or fourteen per cent? The money that yields thus is the money of the gaming table, the money of the bourse. Why did you bring me your funds? Because you were fully satisfied that I knew how to handle the cards. Ah! If I was to tell you that I had doubled your capital, you would not ask how I did it, nor whether I had stocked the cards. You would virtuously pocket the money. But I have lost: I am a thief. Well, so be it. But, then, you are all my accomplices. It is the avidity of the dupes which induces the trickery of the sharpers.”

Here he was interrupted by the servant coming in. “Sir,” she exclaimed excitedly, “O sir! the courtyard is full of police agents. They are speaking to the concierge. They are coming up stairs: I hear them!”

III

According to the time and place where they are uttered, there are words which acquire a terrible significance. In this disordered room, in the midst of these excited people, that word, the “police,”
sounded like a thunderclap.

“Do not open,” Maxence ordered; “do not open, however they may ring or knock. Let them burst the door first.”

The very excess of her fright restored to Mme. Favoral a portion of her energy. Throwing herself before her husband as if to protect him, as if to defend him,

“They are coming to arrest you, Vincent,” she exclaimed. “They are coming; don’t you hear them?”

He remained motionless, his feet seemingly riveted to the floor.

“That is as I expected,” he said.

And with the accent of the wretch who sees all hope vanish, and who utterly gives up all struggle,

“Be it so,” he said. “Let them arrest me, and let all be over at once. I have had enough anxiety, enough unbearable alternatives. I am tired always to feign, to deceive, and to lie. Let them arrest me! Any misfortune will be smaller in reality than the horrors of uncertainty. I have nothing more to fear now. For the first time in many years I shall sleep to-night.”

He did not notice the sinister expression of his guests. “You think I am a thief,” he added: “well, be satisfied, justice shall be done.”

But he attributed to them sentiments which were no longer theirs. They had forgotten their anger, and their bitter resentment for their lost money.

The imminence of the peril awoke suddenly in their souls the memories of the past, and that strong affection which comes from long habit, and a constant exchange of services rendered. Whatever M. Favoral might have done, they only saw in him now the friend, the host whose bread they had broken together more than a hundred times, the man whose probity, up to this fatal night, had remained far above suspicion.

Pale, excited, they crowded around him.

“Have you lost your mind?” spoke M. Desormeaux. “Are you going to wait to be arrested, thrown into prison, dragged into a criminal court?”

He shook his head, and in a tone of idiotic obstinacy,

“Have I not told you,” he repeated, “that every thing is against me? Let them come; let them do what they please with me.”

“And your wife,” insisted M. Chapelain, the old lawyer, “and your children!”

“Will they be any the less dishonored if I am condemned by default?”

Wild with grief, Mme. Favoral was wringing her hands.

“Vincent,” she murmured, “in the name of Heaven spare us the harrowing agony to have you in prison.”

Obstinately he remained silent. His daughter, Mlle. Gilberte, dropped upon her knees before him, and, joining her hands:

“I beseech you, father,” she begged.

He shuddered all over. An unspeakable expression of suffering and anguish contracted his features; and, speaking in a scarcely intelligible voice:

“Ah! you are cruelly protracting my agony,” he stammered. “What do you ask of me?”

“You must fly,” declared M. Desclavettes.

“Which way? How? Do you not think that every precaution has been taken, that every issue is closely watched?”

Maxence interrupted him with a gesture:

“The windows in sister’s room, father,” said he, “open upon the courtyard of the adjoining house.”

“Yes; but here we are up two pairs of stairs.”

“No matter: I have a way.”

And turning towards his sister:

“Come, Gilberte,” went on the young man, “give me a light, and let me have some sheets.”

They went out hurriedly. Mme. Favoral felt a gleam of hope.

“We are saved!” she said.

“Saved!” repeated the cashier mechanically. “Yes; for I guess Maxence’s idea. But we must have an understanding. Where will you take refuge?”

“How can I tell?”

“There is a train at five minutes past eleven,” remarked M. Desormeaux. “Don’t let us forget that.”

“But money will be required to leave by that train,” interrupted the old lawyer. “Fortunately, I have some.”

And, forgetting his hundred and sixty thousand francs lost, he took out his pocket-book. Mme. Favoral stopped him. “We have more than we need,” said she.

She took from the table, and held out to her husband, the roll of bank notes which the director of the Mutual Credit Society had thrown down before going.

He refused them with a gesture of rage.

“Rather starve to death!” he exclaimed. “‘Tis he, ‘tis that wretch--”
But he interrupted himself, and more gently:

“Put away those bank-bills,” said he to his wife, “and let Maxence take them back to M. de Thaller to-morrow.”

The bell rang violently.

“The police!” groaned Mme. Desclavettes, who seemed on the point of fainting away.

“I am going to negotiate,” said M. Desormeaux. “Fly, Vincent: do not lose a minute.”

And he ran to the front-door, whilst Mme. Favoral was hurrying her husband towards Mlle. Gilberte’s room.

Rapidly and stoutly Maxence had fastened four sheets together by the ends, which gave a more than sufficient length. Then, opening the window, he examined carefully the courtyard of the adjoining house.

“No one,” said he: “everybody is at dinner. We’ll succeed.”

M. Favoral was tottering like a drunken man. A terrible emotion convulsed his features. Casting a long look upon his wife and children:

“O Lord!” he murmured, “what will become of you?”

“Fear nothing, father,” uttered Maxence. “I am here. Neither my mother nor my sister will want for any thing.”

“My son!” resumed the cashier, “my children!”

Then, with a choking voice:

“I am worthy neither of your love nor your devotion, wretch that I am! I made you lead a miserable existence, spend a joyless youth. I imposed upon you every trial of poverty, whilst I--And now I leave you nothing but ruin and a dishonored name.”

“Make haste, father,” interrupted Mlle. Gilberte. It seemed as if he could not make up his mind.

“It is horrible to abandon you thus. What a parting! Ah! death would indeed be far preferable. What will you think of me? I am very guilty, certainly, but not as you think. I have been betrayed, and I must suffer for all. If at least you knew the whole truth. But will you ever know it? We will never see each other again.”

Desperately his wife clung to him.

“Do not speak thus,” she said. “Wherever you may find an asylum, I will join you. Death alone can separate us. What do I care what you may have done, or what the world will say? I am your wife. Our children will come with me. If necessary, we will emigrate to America; we’ll change our name; we will work.”

The knocks on the outer door were becoming louder and louder; and M. Desormeaux’ voice could be heard, endeavoring to gain a few moments more.

“Come,” said Maxence, “you cannot hesitate any longer.”

And, overcoming his father’s reluctance, he fastened one end of the sheets around his waist.

“I am going to let you down, father,” said he; “and, as soon as you touch the ground, you must undo the knot. Take care of the first-story windows; beware of the concierge; and, once in the street, don’t walk too fast. Make for the Boulevard, where you will be sooner lost in the crowd.”

The knocks had now become violent blows; and it was evident that the door would soon be broken in, if M. Desormeaux did not make up his mind to open it.

The light was put out. With the assistance of his daughter, M. Favoral lifted himself upon the window-sill, whilst Maxence held the sheets with both hands.

“I beseech you, Vincent,” repeated Mme. Favoral, “write to us. We shall be in mortal anxiety until we hear of your safety.”

Maxence let the sheets slip slowly: in two seconds M. Favoral stood on the pavement below.

“All right,” he said.

The young man drew the sheets back rapidly, and threw them under the bed. But Mlle. Gilberte remained long enough at the window to recognize her father’s voice asking the concierge to open the door, and to hear the heavy gate of the adjoining house closing behind him.

“Saved!” she said.

It was none too soon. M. Desormeaux had just been compelled to yield; and the commissary of police was walking in.

IV

The commissaries of police of Paris, as a general thing, are no simpletons; and, if they are ever taken in, it is because it has suited them to be taken in.

Their modest title covers the most important, perhaps, of magistracies, almost the only one known to the lower classes; an enormous power, and an influence so decisive, that the most sensible statesman of the reign of Louis Philippe ventured once to say, “Give me twenty good commissaries of police in Paris, and I’ll undertake to suppress any government: net profit, one hundred millions.”

Parisian above all, the commissary has had ample time to study his ground when he was yet only a peace-officer. The dark side of the most brilliant lives has no mysteries for him. He has received the strangest confidences: he has listened to the most astounding confessions. He knows how low humanity can stoop, and what aberrations there are in brains apparently the soundest. The work woman whom her husband beats, and the great lady whom her husband cheats, have both come to him. He has been sent for by the shop-keeper whom his wife deceives, and by the millionaire who has been blackmailed. To his office, as to a lay confessional, all passions fatally lead. In his presence the dirty linen of two millions of people is washed _en famille_.

A Paris commissary of police, who after ten years’ practice, could retain an illusion, believe in something, or be astonished at any thing in the world, would be but a fool. If he is still capable of some emotion, he is a good man.

The one who had just walked into M. Favoral’s apartment was already past middle age, colder than ice, and yet kindly, but of that commonplace kindliness which frightens like the executioner’s politeness at the scaffold.

He required but a single glance of his small but clear eyes to decipher the physiognomies of all these worthy people standing around the disordered table. And beckoning to the agents who accompanied him to stop at the door,--“Monsieur Vincent Favoral?”
he inquired. The cashier’s guests, M. Desormeaux excepted, seemed stricken with stupor. Each one felt as if he had a share of the disgrace of this police invasion. The dupes who are sometimes caught in clandestine “hells” have the same humiliated attitudes.

At last, and not without an effort,

“M. Favoral is no longer here,” replied M. Chapelain, the old lawyer.

The commissary of police started. Whilst they were discussing with him through the door, he had perfectly well understood that they were only trying to gain time; and, if he had not at once burst in the door, it was solely owing to his respect for M. Desormeaux himself, whom he knew personally, and still more for his title of head clerk at the Department of Justice. But his suspicions did not extend beyond the destruction of a few compromising papers. Whereas, in fact:

“You have helped M. Favoral to escape, gentlemen?” said he.

No one replied.

“Silence means assent,” he added. “Very well: which way did he get off?”

Still no answer. M. Desclavettes would have been glad to add something to the forty-five thousand francs he had just lost, to be, together with Mme. Desclavettes, a hundred miles away.

“Where is Mme. Favoral?” resumed the commissary, evidently well informed. “Where are Mlle. Gilberte and M. Maxence Favoral?”

They continued silent. No one in the dining-room knew what might have taken place in the other room; and a single word might be treason.

The commissary then became impatient.

“Take up a light,” said he to one of the agents who had remained at the door, “and follow me. We shall see.”

And without a shadow of hesitation, for it seems to be the privilege of police-agents to be at home everywhere, he crossed the parlor, and reached Mlle. Gilberte’s room just as she was withdrawing from the window.

“Ah, it is that way he escaped!” he exclaimed.

He rushed to the window, and remained long enough leaning on his elbows to thoroughly examine the ground, and understand the situation of the apartment.

“It’s evident,” he said at last, “this window opens on the courtyard of the next house.”

This was said to one of his agents, who bore an unmistakable resemblance to the servant who had been asking so many questions in the afternoon.

“Instead of gathering so much useless information,” he added, “why did you not post yourself as to the outlets of the house?”

He was “sold”; and yet he manifested neither spite nor anger. He seemed in no wise anxious to run after the fugitive. Upon the features of Maxence and of Mlle. Gilberte, and more still in Mme. Favoral’s eyes, he had read that it would be useless for the present.

“Let us examine the papers, then,” said he.

“My husband’s papers are all in his study,” replied Mme. Favoral.

“Please lead me to it, madame.”

The room which M. Favoral called loftily his study was a small room with a tile floor, white-washed walls, and meanly lighted through a narrow transom.

It was furnished with an old desk, a small wardrobe with grated door, a few shelves upon which were piled some bandboxes and bundles of old newspapers, and two or three deal chairs.

“Where are the keys?” inquired the commissary of police.

“My father always carries them in his pocket, sir,” replied Maxence.

“Then let some one go for a locksmith.” Stronger than fear, curiosity had drawn all the guests of the cashier of the Mutual Credit Society, M. Desormeaux, M. Chapelain, M. Desclavettes himself; and, standing within the door-frame, they followed eagerly every motion of the commissary, who, pending the arrival of the locksmith, was making a flying examination of the bundles of papers left exposed upon the desk.

After a while, and unable to hold in any longer:

“Would it be indiscreet,” timidly inquired the old bronze-merchant, “to ask the nature of the charges against that poor Favoral?”

“Embezzlement, sir.”

“And is the amount large?”

“Had it been small, I should have said theft. Embezzling commences only when the sum has reached a round figure.”

Annoyed at the sardonic tone of the commissary:

“The fact is,” resumed M. Chapelain, “Favoral was our friend; and, if we could get him out of the scrape, we would all willingly contribute.”

“It’s a matter of ten or twelve millions, gentlemen.” Was it possible? Was it even likely? Could any one imagine so many millions slipping through the fingers of M. de Thaller’s methodic cashier?

“Ah, sir!” exclaimed Mme. Favoral, “if any thing could relieve my feelings, the enormity of that sum would. My husband was a man of simple and modest tastes.”

The commissary shook his head.

“There are certain passions,” he interrupted, “which nothing betrays externally. Gambling is more terrible than fire. After a fire, some charred remnants are found. What is there left after a lost game? Fortunes may be thrown into the vortex of the bourse, without a trace of them being left.”

The unfortunate woman was not convinced.

“I could swear, sir,” she protested, “that I knew how my husband spent every hour of his life.”

“Do not swear, madame.”

“All our friends will tell you how parsimonious my husband was.”

“Here, madame, towards yourself and your children, I have no doubt; for seeing is believing: but elsewhere--”

He was interrupted by the arrival of the locksmith, who, in less than five minutes, had picked all the locks of the old desk.

But in vain did the commissary search all the drawers. He found only those useless papers which are made relics of by people who have made order their religious faith,--uninteresting letters, grocers’ and butchers’ bills running back twenty years.

“It is a waste of time to look for any thing here,” he growled.

And in fact he was about to give up his perquisitions, when a bundle thinner than the rest attracted his attention. He cut the thread that bound it; and almost at once:

“I knew I was right,” he said. And holding out a paper to Mme. Favoral:

“Read, madame, if you please.”

It was a bill. She read thus:

“Sold to M. Favoral an India Cashmere, fr. 8,500.
Received payment, FORBE & TOWLER.”

“Is it for you, madame,” asked the commissary, “that this magnificent shawl was bought?”

Stupefied with astonishment, the poor woman still refused to admit the evidence.

“Madame de Thaller spends a great deal,” she stammered. “My husband often made important purchases for her account.”

“Often, indeed!” interrupted the commissary of police; “for here are many other receipted bills,--earrings, sixteen thousand francs; a bracelet, three thousand francs; a parlor set, a horse, two velvet dresses. Here is a part, at least, if not the whole, of the ten millions.”

V

Had the commissary received any information in advance? or was he guided only by the scent peculiar to men of his profession, and the habit of suspecting every thing, even that which seems most unlikely?

At any rate he expressed himself in a tone of absolute certainty.

The agents who had accompanied and assisted him in his researches were winking at each other, and giggling stupidly. The situation struck them as rather pleasant.

The others, M. Desclavettes, M. Chapelain, and the worthy M. Desormeaux himself, could have racked their brains in vain to find terms wherein to express the immensity of their astonishments. Vincent Favoral, their old friend, paying for cashmeres, diamonds, and parlor sets! Such an idea could not enter in their minds. For whom could such princely gifts be intended? For a mistress, for one of those redoubtable creatures whom fancy represents crouching in the depths of love, like monsters at the bottom of their caves!

But how could any one imagine the methodic cashier of the Mutual Credit Society carried away by one of those insane passions which knew no reason? Ruined by gambling, perhaps, but by a woman!

Could any one picture him, so homely and so plain here, Rue St. Gilles, at the head of another establishment, and leading elsewhere in one of the brilliant quarters of Paris, a reckless life, such as strike terror in the bosom of quiet families?

Could any one understand the same man at once miserly-economical and madly-prodigal, storming when his wife spent a few cents, and robbing to supply the expenses of an adventuress, and collecting in the same drawer the jeweler’s accounts and the butcher’s bills?

“It is the climax of absurdity,” murmured good M. Desormeaux.

Maxence fairly shook with wrath. Mlle. Gilberte was weeping.

Mme. Favoral alone, usually so timid, boldly defended, and with her utmost energy, the man whose name she bore. That he might have embezzled millions, she admitted: that he had deceived and betrayed her so shamefully, that he had made a wretched dupe of her for so many years, seemed to her insensate, monstrous, impossible.

And purple with shame:

“Your suspicions would vanish at once, sir,” she said to the commissary, “if I could but explain to you our mode of life.”

Encouraged by his first discovery, he was proceeding more minutely with his perquisitions, undoing the strings of every bundle.

“It is useless, madame,” he answered in that brief tone which made so much impression upon M. Desclavettes. “You can only tell me what you know; and you know nothing.”

“Never, sir, did a man lead a more regular life than M. Favoral.”

“In appearance, you are right. Besides, to regulate one’s disorder is one of the peculiarities of our time. We open credits to our passions, and we keep account of our infamies by double entry. We operate with method. We embezzle millions that we may hang diamonds to the ears of an adventuress; but we are careful, and we keep the receipted bills.”

“But, sir, I have already told you that I never lost sight of my husband.”

“Of course.”

“Every morning, precisely at nine o’clock, he left home to go to M. de Thaller’s office.”

“The whole neighborhood knows that, madame.”

“At half-past five he came home.”

“That, also, is a well-known fact.”

“After dinner he went out to play a game, but it was his only amusement; and at eleven o’clock he was always in bed.”

“Perfectly correct.”

“Well, then, sir, where could M. Favoral have found time to abandon himself to the excesses of which you accuse him?”

Imperceptibly the commissary of police shrugged his shoulders.

“Far from me, madame,” he uttered, “to doubt your good faith. What matters it, moreover, whether your husband spent in this way or in that way the sums which he is charged with having appropriated? But what do your objections prove? Simply that M. Favoral was very skillful, and very much self-possessed. Had he breakfasted when he left you at nine? No. Pray, then, where did he breakfast? In a restaurant? Which? Why did he come home only at half-past five, when his office actually closed at three o’clock? Are you quite sure that it was to the Cafe Turc that he went every evening? Finally, why do not you say anything of the extra work which he always had to attend to, as he pretended, once or twice a month? Sometimes it was a loan, sometimes a liquidation, or a settlement of dividends, which devolved upon him. Did he come home then? No. He told you that he would dine out, and that it would be more convenient for him to have a cot put up in his office; and thus you were twenty-four or forty-eight hours without seeing him. Surely this double existence must have weighed heavily upon him; but he was forbidden from breaking off with you, under penalty of being caught the very next day with his hand in the till. It is the respectability of his official life here which made the other possible,--that which has absorbed such enormous sums. The harsher and the closer he were here, the more magnificent he could show himself elsewhere. His household in the Rue St. Gilles was for him a certificate of impunity. Seeing him so economical, every one thought him rich. People who seem to spend nothing are always trusted. Every privation which he imposed upon you increased his reputation of austere probity, and raised him farther above suspicion.”

Big tears were rolling down Mme. Favoral’s cheeks.

“Why not tell me the whole truth?” she stammered.

“Because I do not know it,” replied the commissary; “because these are all mere presumptions. I have seen so many instances of similar calculations!”

Then regretting, perhaps, to have said so much,

“But I may be mistaken,” he added: “I do not pretend to be infallible.” He was just then completing a brief inventory of all the papers found in the old desk. There was nothing left but to examine the drawer which was used for a cash drawer. He found in it in gold, notes, and small change, seven hundred and eighteen francs.

Having counted this sum, the commissary offered it to Mme. Favoral, saying,

“This belongs to you madame.”

But instinctively she withdrew her hand.

“Never!” she said.

The commissary went on with a gesture of kindness,--“I understand your scruples, madame, and yet I must insist. You may believe me when I tell you that this little sum is fairly and legitimately yours. You have no personal fortune.”

The efforts of the poor woman to keep from bursting into loud sobs were but too visible.

“I possess nothing in the world, sir,” she said in a broken voice. “My husband alone attended to our business-affairs. He never spoke to me about them; and I would not have dared to question him. Alone he disposed of our money. Every Sunday he handed me the amount which he thought necessary for the expenses of the week, and I rendered him an account of it. When my children or myself were in need of any thing, I told him so, and he gave me what he thought proper. This is Saturday: of what I received last Sunday I have five francs left: that, is our whole fortune.”

Positively the commissary was moved.

“You see, then, madame,” he said, “that you cannot hesitate: you must live.”

Maxence stepped forward.

“Am I not here, sir?” he said.

The commissary looked at him keenly, and in a grave tone,

“I believe indeed, sir,” he replied, “that you will not suffer your mother and sister to want for any thing. But resources are not created in a day. Yours, if I have not been deceived, are more than limited just now.”

And as the young man blushed, and did not answer, he handed the seven hundred francs to Mlle. Gilberte, saying,

“Take this, mademoiselle: your mother permits it.” His work was done. To place his seals upon M. Favoral’s study was the work of a moment.

Beckoning, then, to his agents to withdraw, and being ready to leave himself,

“Let not the seals cause you any uneasiness, madame,” said the commissary of police to Mme. Favoral. “Before forty-eight hours, some one will come to remove these papers, and restore to you the free use of that room.”

He went out; and, as soon as the door had closed behind him,

“Well?” exclaimed M. Desormeaux;

But no one had any thing to say. The guests of that house where misfortune had just entered were making haste to leave. The catastrophe was certainly terrible and unforeseen; but did it not reach them too? Did they not lose among them more than three hundred thousand francs?

Thus, after a few commonplace protestations, and some of those promises which mean nothing, they withdrew; and, as they were going down the stairs,

“The commissary took Vincent’s escape too easy,” remarked M. Desormeaux. “He must know some way to catch him again.”

VI

At last Mme. Favoral found herself alone with her children and free to give herself up to the most frightful despair.

She dropped heavily upon a seat; and, drawing to her bosom Maxence and Gilberte,

“O my children!” she sobbed, covering them with her kisses and her tears,--“my children, we are most unfortunate.”

Not less distressed than herself, they strove, nevertheless, to mitigate her anguish, to inspire her with sufficient courage to bear this crushing trial; and kneeling at her feet, and kissing her hands,

“Are we not with you still, mother?” they kept repeating.

But she seemed not to hear them.

“It is not for myself that I weep,” she went on. “I! what had I still to wait or hope for in life? Whilst you, Maxence, you, my poor Gilberte!--If, at least, I could feel myself free from blame! But no. It is my weakness and my want of courage that have brought on this catastrophe. I shrank from the struggle. I purchased my domestic peace at the cost of your future in the world. I forgot that a mother has sacred duties towards her children.”

Mme. Favoral was at this time a woman of some forty-three years, with delicate and mild features, a countenance overflowing with kindness, and whose whole being exhaled, as it were, an exquisite perfume of _noblesse_ and distinction.

Happy, she might have been beautiful still,--of that autumnal beauty whose maturity has the splendors of the luscious fruits of the later season.

But she had suffered so much! The livid paleness of her complexion, the rigid fold of her lips, the nervous shudders that shook her frame, revealed a whole existence of bitter deceptions, of exhausting struggles, and of proudly concealed humiliations.

And yet every thing seemed to smile upon her at the outset of life.

She was an only daughter; and her parents, wealthy silk-merchants, had brought her up like the daughter of an archduchess desired to marry some sovereign prince.

But at fifteen she had lost her mother. Her father, soon tired of his lonely fireside, commenced to seek away from home some diversion from his sorrow.

He was a man of weak mind,--one of those marked in advance to play the part of eternal dupes. Having money, he found many friends. Having once tasted the cup of facile pleasures, he yielded readily to its intoxication. Suppers, cards, amusements, absorbed his time, to the utter detriment of his business. And, eighteen months after his wife’s death, he had already spent a large portion of his fortune, when he fell into the hands of an adventuress, whom, without regard for his daughter, he audaciously brought beneath his own roof.

In provincial cities, where everybody knows everybody else, such infamies are almost impossible. They are not quite so rare in Paris, where one is, so to speak, lost in the crowd, and where the restraining power of the neighbor’s opinion is lacking.

For two years the poor girl, condemned to bear this illegitimate stepmother, endured nameless sufferings.

She had just completed her eighteenth year, when, one evening, her father took her aside.

“I have made up my mind to marry again,” he said; “but I wish first to provide you with a husband. I have looked for one, and found him. He is not very brilliant perhaps; but he is, it seems, a good, hard-working, economical fellow, who’ll make his way in the world. I had dreamed of something better for you; but times are hard, trade is dull: in short, having only a dowry of twenty thousand francs to give you, I have no right to be very particular. To-morrow I’ll bring you my candidate.”

And, sure enough, the next day that excellent father introduced M. Vincent Favoral to his daughter.

She was not pleased with him; but she could hardly have said that she was displeased.

He was, at the age of twenty-five, which he had just reached, a man so utterly lacking in individuality, that he could scarcely have excited any feeling either of sympathy or affection.

Suitably dressed, he seemed timid and awkward, reserved, quite diffident, and of mediocre intelligence. He confessed to have received a most imperfect education, and declared himself quite ignorant of life. He had scarcely any means outside his profession. He was at this time chief accountant in a large factory of the Faubourg St. Antoine, with a salary of four thousand Francs a year.

The young girl did not hesitate a moment. Any thing appeared to her preferable to the contact of a woman whom she abhorred and despised.

She gave her consent; and, twenty days after the first interview, she had become Mme. Favoral.

Alas! six weeks had not elapsed, before she knew that she had but exchanged her wretched fate for a more wretched one still.

Not that her husband was in any way unkind to her (he dared not, as yet); but he had revealed himself enough to enable her to judge him. He was one of those formidably selfish men who wither every thing around them, like those trees within the shadow of which nothing can grow. His coldness concealed a stupid obstinacy; his mildness, an iron will.

If he had married, ‘twas because he thought a wife a necessary adjunct, because he desired a home wherein to command, because, above all, he had been seduced by the dowry of twenty thousand francs.

For the man had one passion,--money. Under his placid countenance revolved thoughts of the most burning covetousness. He wished to be rich.

Now, as he had no illusion whatever upon his own merits, as he knew himself to be perfectly incapable of any of those daring conceptions which lead to rapid fortune, as he was in no wise enterprising, he conceived but one means to achieve wealth, that is, to save, to economize, to stint himself, to pile penny upon penny.

His profession of accountant had furnished him with a number of instances of the financial power of the penny daily saved, and invested so as to yield its maximum of interest.

If ever his blue eye became animated, it was when he calculated what would be at the present time the capital produced by a simple penny placed at five per cent interest the year of the birth of our Saviour.

For him this was sublime. He conceived nothing beyond. One penny! He wished, he said, he could have lived eighteen hundred years, to follow the evolutions of that penny, to see it grow tenfold, a hundred-fold, produce, swell, enlarge, and become, after centuries, millions and hundreds of millions.

In spite of all, he had, during the early months of his marriage, allowed his wife to have a young servant. He gave her from time to time, a five-franc-piece, and took her to the country on Sundays.

This was the honeymoon; and, as he declared himself, this life of prodigalities could not last.

Under a futile pretext, the little servant was dismissed. He tightened the strings of his purse. The Sunday excursions were suppressed.

To mere economy succeeded the niggardly parsimony which counts the grains of salt in the _pot-au-feu_, which weighs the soap for the washing, and measures the evening’s allowance of candle.

Gradually the accountant took the habit of treating his young wife like a servant, whose honesty is suspected; or like a child, whose thoughtlessness is to be feared. Every morning he handed her the money for the expenses of the day; and every evening he expressed his surprise that she had not made better use of it. He accused her of allowing herself to be grossly cheated, or even to be in collusion with the dealers. He charged her with being foolishly extravagant; which fact, however, he added, did not surprise him much on the part of the daughter of a man who had dissipated a large fortune.

To cap the climax, Vincent Favoral was on the worst possible terms with his father-in-law. Of the twenty thousand francs of his wife’s dowry, twelve thousand only had been paid, and it was in vain that he clamored for the balance. The silk-merchant’s business had become unprofitable; he was on the verge of bankruptcy. The eight thousand francs seemed in imminent danger.

His wife alone he held responsible for this deception. He repeated to her constantly that she had connived with her father to “take him in,” to fleece him, to ruin him.

What an existence! Certainly, had the unhappy woman known where to find a refuge, she would have fled from that home where each of her days was but a protracted torture. But where could she go? Of whom could she beg a shelter?

She had terrible temptations at this time, when she was not yet twenty, and they called her the beautiful Mme. Favoral.

Perhaps she would have succumbed, when she discovered that she was about to become a mother. One year, day for day, after her marriage, she gave birth to a son, who received the name of Maxence.

The accountant was but indifferently pleased at the coming of this son. It was, above all, a cause of expense. He had been compelled to give some thirty francs to a nurse, and almost twice as much for the baby’s clothes. Then a child breaks up the regularity of one’s habits; and he, as he affirmed, was attached to his as much as to life itself. And now he saw his household disturbed, the hours of his meals altered, his own importance reduced, his authority even ignored.

But what mattered now to his young wife the ill-humor which he no longer took the trouble to conceal? Mother, she defied her tyrant.

Now, at least, she had in this world a being upon whom she could lavish all her caresses so brutally repelled. There existed a soul within which she reigned supreme. What troubles would not a smile of her son have made her forget?

With the admirable instinct of an egotist, M. Favoral understood so well what passed in the mind of his wife, that he dared not complain too much of what the little fellow cost. He made up his mind bravely; and when four years later, his daughter Gilberte was born, instead of lamenting:

“Bash!” said he: “God blesses large families.”

VII

But already, at this time, M. Vincent Favoral’s situation had been singularly modified.

The revolution of 1848 had just taken place. The factory in the Faubourg St. Antoine, where he was employed, had been compelled to close its doors.

One evening, as he came home at the usual hour, he announced that he had been discharged.

Mme. Favoral shuddered at the thought of what her husband might be, without work, and deprived of his salary.

“What is to become of us?” she murmured.

He shrugged his shoulders. Visibly he was much excited. His cheeks were flushed; his eyes sparkled.

“Bash!” he said: “we shan’t starve for all that.” And, as his wife was gazing at him in astonishment:

“Well,” he went on, “what are you looking at? It is so: I know many a one who affects to live on his income, and who are not as well off as we are.”

It was, for over six years since he was married, the first time that he spoke of his business otherwise than to groan and complain, to accuse fate, and curse the high price of living. The very day before, he had declared himself ruined by the purchase of a pair of shoes for Maxence. The change was so sudden and so great, that she hardly knew what to think, and wondered if grief at the loss of his situation had not somewhat disturbed his mind.

“Such are women,” he went on with a giggle. “Results astonish them, because they know nothing of the means used to bring them about. Am I a fool, then? Would I impose upon myself privations of all sorts, if it were to accomplish nothing? Parbleu! I love fine living too, I do, and good dinners at the restaurant, and the theatre, and the nice little excursions in the country. But I want to be rich. At the price of all the comforts which I have not had, I have saved a capital, the income of which will support us all. Eh, eh! That’s the power of the little penny put out to fatten!”

As she went to bed that night, Mme. Favoral felt more happy than she had done since her mother’s death. She almost forgave her husband his sordid parsimony, and the humiliations he had heaped upon her.

“Well, be it so,” she thought. “I shall have lived miserably, I shall have endured nameless sufferings; but my children shall be rich, their life shall be easy and pleasant.”

The next day M. Favoral’s excitement had completely abated. Manifestly he regretted his confidences.

“You must not think on that account that you can waste and pillage every thing,” he declared rudely. “Besides, I have greatly exaggerated.”

And he started in search of a situation.

To find one was likely to be difficult. Times of revolution are not exactly propitious to industry. Whilst the parties discussed in the Chamber, there were on the street twenty thousand clerks, who, every morning as they rose, wondered where they would dine that day.

For want of any thing better, Vincent Favoral undertook to keep books in various places,--an hour here, an hour there, twice a week in one house, four times in another.

In this way he earned as much and more than he did at the factory; but the business did not suit him.

What he liked was the office from which one does not stir, the stove-heated atmosphere, the elbow-worn desk, the leather-cushioned chair, the black alpaca sleeves over the coat. The idea that he should on one and the same day have to do with five or six different houses, and be compelled to walk an hour, to go and work another hour at the other end of Paris, fairly irritated him. He found himself out of his reckoning, like a horse who has turned a mill for ten years; if he is made to trot straight before him.

So, one morning, he gave up the whole thing, swearing that he would rather remain idle until he could find a place suited to his taste and his convenience; and, in the mean time, all they would have to do would be to put a little less butter in the soup, and a little more water in the wine.

He went out, nevertheless, and remained until dinner-time. And he did the same the next and the following days.

He started off the moment he had swallowed the last mouthful of his breakfast, came home at six o’clock, dined in haste, and disappeared again, not to return until about midnight. He had hours of delirious joy, and moments of frightful discouragement. Sometimes he seemed horribly uneasy.

“What can he be doing?” thought Mme. Favoral.

She ventured to ask him the question one morning, when he was in fine humor.

“Well,” he answered, “am I not the master? I am operating at the bourse, that’s all!”

He could hardly have owned to any thing that would have frightened the poor woman as much.

“Are you not afraid,” she objected, “to lose all we have so painfully accumulated? We have children--”

He did not allow her to proceed.

“Do you take me for a child?” he exclaimed; “or do I look to you like a man so easy to be duped? Mind to economize in your household expenses, and don’t meddle with my business.”

And he continued. And he must have been lucky in his operations; for he had never been so pleasant at home. All his ways had changed. He had had clothes made at a first-class tailor’s, and was evidently trying to look elegant. He gave up his pipe, and smoked only cigars. He got tired of giving every morning the money for the house, and took the habit of handing it to his wife every week, on Sunday. A mark of vast confidence, as he observed to her. And so, the first time:

“Be careful,” he said, “that you don’t find yourself penniless before Thursday.”

He became also more communicative. Often during the dinner, he would tell what he had heard during the day, anecdotes, gossip. He enumerated the persons with whom he had spoken. He named a number of people whom he called his friends, and whose names Mme. Favoral carefully stored away in her memory.

There was one especially, who seemed to inspire him with a profound respect, a boundless admiration, and of whom he never tired of talking. He was, said he, a man of his age,--M. de Thaller, the Baron de Thaller.

“This one,” he kept repeating, “is really mad: he is rich, he has ideas, he’ll go far. It would be a great piece of luck if I could get him to do something for me!”

Until at last one day:

“Your parents were very rich once?” he asked his wife.

“I have heard it said,” she answered.

“They spent a good deal of money, did they not? They had friends: they gave dinner-parties.”

“Yes, they received a good deal of company.”

“You remember that time?”

“Surely I do.”

“So that if I should take a fancy to receive some one here, some one of note, you would know how to do things properly?”

“I think so.”

He remained silent for a moment, like a man who thinks before taking an important decision, and then:

“I wish to invite a few persons to dinner,” he said. She could scarcely believe her ears. He had never received at his table any one but a fellow-clerk at the factory, named Desclavettes, who had just married the daughter of a dealer in bronzes, and succeeded to his business.

“Is it possible?” exclaimed Mme. Favoral.

“So it is. The question is now, how much would a first-class dinner cost, the best of every thing?”

“That depends upon the number of guests.”

“Say three or four persons.”

The poor woman set herself to figuring diligently for some time; and then timidly, for the sum seemed formidable to her:

“I think,” she began, “that with a hundred francs--”

Her husband commenced whistling.

“You’ll need that for the wines alone;” he interrupted. “Do you take me for a fool? But here, don’t let us go into figures. Do as your parents did when they did their best; and, if it’s well, I shall not complain of the expense. Take a good cook, hire a waiter who understands his business well.”

She was utterly confounded; and yet she was not at the end of her surprises.

Soon M. Favoral declared that their table-ware was not suitable, and that he must buy a new set. He discovered a hundred purchases to be made, and swore that he would make them. He even hesitated a moment about renewing the parlor furniture, although it was in tolerably good condition still, and was a present from his father-in-law.

And, having finished his inventory:

“And you,” he asked his wife: “what dress will you wear?”

“I have my black silk dress--”

He stopped her.

“Which means that you have none at all,” he said. “Very well. You must go this very day and get yourself one,--a very handsome, a magnificent one; and you’ll send it to be made to a fashionable dressmaker. And at the same time you had better get some little suits for Maxence and Gilberte. Here are a thousand francs.”

Completely bewildered:

“Who in the world are you going to invite, then?” she asked.

“The Baron and the Baroness de Thaller,” he replied with an emphasis full of conviction. “So try and distinguish yourself. Our fortune is at stake.”

That this dinner was a matter of considerable import, Mme. Favoral could not doubt when she saw her husband’s fabulous liberality continue without flinching for a number of days.

Ten times of an afternoon he would come home to tell his wife the name of some dish that had been mentioned before him, or to consult her on the subject of some exotic viand he had just noticed in some shop-window. Daily he brought home wines of the most fantastic vintages,--those wines which dealers manufacture for the special use of verdant fools, and which they sell in odd-shaped bottles previously overlaid with secular dust and cobwebs.

He subjected to a protracted cross-examination the cook whom Mme. Favoral had engaged, and demanded that she should enumerate the houses where she had cooked. He absolutely required the man who was to wait at the table to exhibit the dress-coat he was to wear.

The great day having come, he did not stir from the house, going and coming from the kitchen to the dining-room, uneasy, agitated, unable to stay in one place. He breathed only when he had seen the table set and loaded with the new china he had purchased and the magnificent silver he had gone to hire in person. And when his young wife made her appearance, looking lovely in her new dress, and leading by the hands the two children, Maxence and Gilberte, in their new suits:

“That’s perfect,” he exclaimed, highly delighted. “Nothing could be better. Now, let our four guests come!”

They arrived a few minutes before seven, in two carriages, the magnificence of which astonished the Rue St. Gilles.

And, the presentations over, Vincent Favoral had at last the ineffable satisfaction to see seated at his table the Baron and Baroness de Thaller, M. Saint Pavin, who called himself a financial editor, and M. Jules Jottras, of the house of Jottras & Brother.

It was with an eager curiosity that Mme. Favoral observed these people whom her husband called his friends, and whom she saw herself for the first time.

M. de Thaller, who could not then have been much over thirty, was already a man without any particular age.

Cold, stiff, aping evidently the English style, he expressed himself in brief sentences, and with a strong foreign accent. Nothing to surprise on his countenance. He had the forehead prominent, the eyes of a dull blue, and the nose very thin. His scanty hair was spread over the top of his head with labored symmetry; and his red, thick, and carefully-trimmed whiskers seemed to engross much of his attention.

M. Saint Pavin had not the same stiff manner. Careless in his dress, he lacked breeding. He was a robust fellow, dark and bearded, with thick lips, the eye bright and prominent, spreading upon the table-cloth broad hands ornamented at the joints with small tufts of hair, speaking loud, laughing noisily, eating much and drinking more.

By the side of him, M. Jules Jottras, although looking like a fashion-plate, did not show to much advantage. Delicate, blonde, sallow, almost beardless, M. Jottras distinguished himself only by a sort of unconscious impudence, a harmless cynicism, and a sort of spasmodic giggle, that shook the eye-glasses which he wore stuck over his nose.

But it was above all Mme. de Thaller who excited Mme. Favoral’s apprehensions.

Dressed with a magnificence of at least questionable taste, very much _decolletee_, wearing large diamonds at her ears, and rings on all her fingers, the young baroness was insolently handsome, of a beauty sensuous even to coarseness. With hair of a bluish black, twisted over the neck in heavy ringlets, she had skin of a pearly whiteness, lips redder than blood, and great eyes that threw flames from beneath their long, curved lashes. It was the poetry of flesh; and one could not help admiring. Did she speak, however, or make a gesture, all admiration vanished. The voice was vulgar, the motion common. Did M. Jottras venture upon a double-entendre, she would throw herself back upon her chair to laugh, stretching her neck, and thrusting her throat forward.

Wholly absorbed in the care of his guests, M. Favoral remarked nothing. He only thought of loading the plates, and filling the glasses, complaining that they ate and drank nothing, asking anxiously if the cooking was not good, if the wines were bad, and almost driving the waiter out of his wits with questions and suggestions.

It is a fact, that neither M. de Thaller nor M. Jottras had much appetite. But M. Saint Pavin officiated for all; and the sole task of keeping up with him caused M. Favoral to become visibly animated.

His cheeks were much flushed, when, having passed the champagne all around, he raised his froth-tipped glass, exclaiming:

“I drink to the success of the business.”

“To the success of the business,” echoed the others, touching his glass.

And a few moments later they passed into the parlor to take coffee.

This toast had caused Mme. Favoral no little uneasiness. But she found it impossible to ask a single question; Mme. de Thaller dragging her almost by force to a seat by her side on the sofa, pretending that two women always have secrets to exchange, even when they see each other for the first time.

The young baroness was fully _au fait_ in matters of bonnets and dresses; and it was with giddy volubility that she asked Mme. Favoral the names of her milliner and her dressmaker, and to what jeweler she intrusted her diamonds to be reset.

This looked so much like a joke, that the poor housekeeper of the Rue St. Gilles could not help smiling whilst answering that she had no dressmaker, and that, having no diamonds, she had no possible use for the services of a jeweler.

The other declared she could not get over it. No diamonds! That was a misfortune exceeding all. And quick she seized the opportunity charitably to enumerate the parures in her jewel-case, and laces in her drawers, and the dresses in her wardrobes. In the first place, it would have been impossible for her, she swore, to live with a husband either miserly or poor. Hers had just presented her with a lovely coupe, lined with yellow satin, a perfect bijou. And she made good use of it too; for she loved to go about. She spent her days shopping, or riding in the Bois. Every evening she had the choice of the theatre or a ball, often both. The genre theatres were those she preferred. To be sure, the opera and the Italiens were more stylish; but she could not help gaping there.

Then she wished to kiss the children; and Gilberte and Maxence had to be brought in. She adored children, she vowed: it was her weakness, her passion. She had herself a little girl, eighteen months old, called Cesarine, to whom she was devoted; and certainly she would have brought her, had she not feared she would have been in the way.

All this verbiage sounded like a confused murmur to Mme. Favoral’s ears. “Yes, no,” she answered, hardly knowing to what she did answer.

Her head heavy with a vague apprehension, it required her utmost attention to observe her husband and his guests.

Standing by the mantel-piece, smoking their cigars, they conversed with considerable animation, but not loud enough to enable her to hear all they said. It was only when M. Saint Pavin spoke that she understood that they were still discussing the “business;” for he spoke of articles to publish, stocks to sell, dividends to distribute, sure profits to reap.

They all, at any rate, seemed to agree perfectly; and at a certain moment she saw her husband and M. de Thaller strike each other’s hand, as people do who exchange a pledge.

Eleven o’clock struck.

M. Favoral was insisting to make his guests accept a cup of tea or a glass of punch; but M. de Thaller declared that he had some work to do, and that, his carriage having come, he must go.

And go he did, taking with him the baroness, followed by M. Saint Pavin and M. Jottras. And when, the door having closed upon them, M. Favoral found himself alone with his wife,

“Well,” he exclaimed, swelling with gratified vanity, “what do you think of our friends?”

“They surprised me,” she answered.

He fairly jumped at that word.

“I should like to know why?”

Then, timidly, and with infinite precautions, she commenced explaining that M. de Thaller’s face inspired her with no confidence; that M. Jottras had seemed to her a very impudent personage; that M. Saint Pavin appeared low and vulgar; and that, finally, the young baroness had given her of herself the most singular idea.

M. Favoral refused to hear more.

“It’s because you have never seen people of the best society,” he exclaimed.

“Excuse me. Formerly, during my mother’s life--”

“Eh! Your mother never received but shop-keepers.”

The poor woman dropped her head.

“I beg of you, Vincent,” she insisted, “before doing any thing with these new friends, think well, consult--”

He burst out laughing.

“Are you not afraid that they will cheat me?” he said,--“people ten times as rich as we are. Here, don’t let us speak of it any more, and let us go to bed. You’ll see what this dinner will bring us, and whether I ever have reason to regret the money we have spent.”

VIII

When, on the morning after this dinner, which was to form an era in her life, Mme. Favoral woke up, her husband was already up, pencil in hand, and busy figuring.

The charm had vanished with the fumes of the champagne; and the clouds of the worst days were gathering upon his brow.

Noticing that his wife was looking at him,

“It’s expensive work,” he said in a bluff tone, “to set a business going; and it wouldn’t do to commence over again every day.”

To hear him speak, one would have thought that Mme. Favoral alone, by dint of hard begging, had persuaded him into that expense which he now seemed to regret so much. She quietly called his attention to the fact, reminding him that, far from urging, she had endeavored to hold him back; repeating that she augured ill of that business over which he was so enthusiastic, and that, if he would believe her, he would not venture.

“Do you even know what the project is?” he interrupted rudely.

“You have not told me.”

“Very well, then: leave me in peace with your presentiments. You dislike my friends; and I saw very well how you treated Mme. de Thaller. But I am the master; and what I have decided shall be. Besides, I have signed. Once for all, I forbid you ever speaking to me again on that subject.”

Whereupon, having dressed himself with much care, he started off, saying that he was expected at breakfast by Saint Pavin, the financial editor, and by M. Jottras, of the house of Jottras & Brother.

A shrewd woman would not have given it up so easy, and, in the end, would probably have mastered the despot, whose intellect was far from brilliant. But Mme. Favoral was too proud to be shrewd; and besides, the springs of her will had been broken by the successive oppression of an odious stepmother and a brutal master. Her abdication of all was complete. Wounded, she kept the secret of her wound, hung her head, and said nothing.

She did not, therefore, venture a single allusion; and nearly a week elapsed, during which the names of her late guests were not once mentioned.

It was through a newspaper, which M. Favoral had forgotten in the parlor, that she learned that the Baron de Thaller had just founded a new stock company, the Mutual Credit Society, with a capital of several millions.

Below the advertisement, which was printed in enormous letters, came a long article, in which it was demonstrated that the new company was, at the same time, a patriotic undertaking and an institution of credit of the first class; that it supplied a great public want; that it would be of inestimable benefit to industry; that its profits were assured; and that to subscribe to its stock was simply to draw short bills upon fortune.

Already somewhat re-assured by the reading of this article, Mme. Favoral became quite so when she read the names of the board of directors. Nearly all were titled, and decorated with many foreign orders; and the remainder were bankers, office-holders, and even some ex-ministers.

“I must have been mistaken,” she thought, yielding unconsciously to the influence of printed evidence.

And no objection occurred to her, when, a few days later, her husband told her,

“I have the situation I wanted. I am head cashier of the company of which M. de Thaller is manager.”

That was all. Of the nature of this society, of the advantages which it offered him, not one word.

Only by the way in which he expressed himself did Mme. Favoral judge that he must have been well treated; and he further confirmed her in that opinion by granting her, of his own accord, a few additional francs for the daily expenses of the house.

“We must,” he declared on this memorable occasion, “do honor to our social position, whatever it may cost.”

For the first time in his life, he seemed heedful of public opinion. He recommended his wife to be careful of her dress and of that of the children, and re-engaged a servant. He expressed the wish of enlarging their circle of acquaintances, and inaugurated his Saturday dinners, to which came assiduously, M. and Mme. Desclavettes, M. Chapelain the attorney, the old man Desormeaux, and a few others.

As to himself he gradually settled down into those habits from which he was nevermore to depart, and the chronometric regularity of which had secured him the nickname of Old Punctuality, of which he was proud.

In all other respects never did a man, to such a degree, become so utterly indifferent to his wife and children. His house was for him but a mere hotel, where he slept, and took his evening meal. He never thought of questioning his wife as to the use of her time, and what she did in his absence. Provided she did not ask him for money, and was there when he came home, he was satisfied.

Many women, at Mme. Favoral’s age, might have made a strange use of that insulting indifference and of that absolute freedom.

If she did avail herself of it, it was solely to follow one of those inspirations which can only spring in a mother’s heart.

The increase in the budget of the household was relatively large, but so nicely calculated, that she had not one cent more that she could call her own.

With the most intense sorrow, she thought that her children might have to endure the humiliating privations which had made her own life wretched. They were too young yet to suffer from the paternal parsimony; but they would grow; their desires would develop; and it would be impossible for her to grant them the most innocent satisfactions.

Whilst turning over and over in her mind this distressing thought, she remembered a friend of her mother’s, who kept, in the Rue St. Denis, a large establishment for the sale of hosiery and woollen goods. There, perhaps, lay the solution of the problem. She called to see the worthy woman, and, without even needing to confess the whole truth to her, she obtained sundry pieces of work, ill paid as a matter of course, but which, by dint of close application, might be made to yield from eight to twelve francs a week.

From this time she never lost a minute, concealing her work as if it were an evil act.

She knew her husband well enough to feel certain that he would break out, and swear that he spent money enough to enable his wife to live without being reduced to making a work woman of herself.

But what joy, the day when she hid way down at the bottom of a drawer the first twenty-franc-piece she had earned, a beautiful gold-piece, which belonged to her without contest, and which she might spend as she pleased, without having to render any account to any one!

And with what pride, from week to week, she saw her little treasure swell, despite the drafts she made upon it, sometimes to buy a toy for Maxence, sometimes to add a few ribbons or trinkets to Gilberte’s toilet!

This was the happiest time of her life, a halt in that painful journey through which she had been dragging herself for so many years. Between her two children, the hours flew light and rapid as so many seconds. If all the hopes of the young girl and of the woman had withered before they had blossomed, the mother’s joys at least should not fail her. Because, whilst the present sufficed to her modest ambition, the future had ceased to cause her any uneasiness.

No reference had ever been made, between herself and her husband, to that famous dinner-party: he never spoke to her of the Mutual Credit Society; but now and then he allowed some words or exclamations to escape, which she carefully recorded, and which betrayed a prosperous state of affairs.

“That Thaller is a tough fellow!” he would exclaim, “and he has the most infernal luck!”

And at other times,

“Two or three more operations like the one we have just successfully wound up, and we can shut up shop!”

From all this, what could she conclude, if not that he was marching with rapid strides towards that fortune, the object of all his ambition?

Already in the neighborhood he had that reputation to be very rich, which is the beginning of riches itself. He was admired for keeping his house with such rigid economy; for a man is always esteemed who has money, and does not spend it.

“He is not the man ever to squander what he has,” the neighbors repeated.

The persons whom he received on Saturdays believed him more than comfortably off. When M. Desclavettes and M. Chapelain had complained to their hearts’ contents, the one of the shop, the other of his office, they never failed to add,

“You laugh at us, because you are engaged in large operations, where people make as much money as they like.”

They seemed to hold his financial capacities in high estimation. They consulted him, and followed his advice.

M. Desormeaux was wont to say,

“Oh! he knows what he is about.”

And Mme. Favoral tried to persuade herself, that, in this respect at least, her husband was a remarkable man. She attributed his silence and his distractions to the grave cares that filled his mind. In the same manner that he had once announced to her that they had enough to live on, she expected him, some fine morning, to tell her that he was a millionaire.

IX

But the respite granted by fate to Mme. Favoral was drawing to an end: her trials were about to return more poignant than ever, occasioned, this time, by her children, hitherto her whole happiness and her only consolation.

Maxence was nearly twelve. He was a good little fellow, intelligent, studious at times, but thoughtless in the extreme, and of a turbulence which nothing could tame.

At the Massin School, where he had been sent, he made his teachers’ hair turn white; and not a week went by that he did not signalize himself by some fresh misdeed.

A father like any other would have paid but slight attention to the pranks of a schoolboy, who, after all, ranked among the first of his class, and of whom the teachers themselves, whilst complaining, said,

“Bash! What matters it, since the heart is sound and the mind sane?”

But M. Favoral took every thing tragically. If Maxence was kept in, or otherwise punished, he pretended that it reflected upon himself, and that his son was disgracing him.

If a report came home with this remark, “execrable conduct,” he fell into the most violent passion, and seemed to lose all control of himself.

“At your age,” he would shout to the terrified boy, “I was working in a factory, and earning my livelihood. Do you suppose that I will not tire of making sacrifices to procure you the advantages of an education which I lacked myself? Beware. Havre is not far off; and cabin-boys are always in demand there.”

If, at least, he had confined himself to these admonitions, which, by their very exaggeration, failed in their object! But he favored mechanical appliances as a necessary means of sufficiently impressing reprimands upon the minds of young people; and therefore, seizing his cane, he would beat poor Maxence most unmercifully, the more so that the boy, filled with pride, would have allowed himself to be chopped to pieces rather than utter a cry, or shed a tear.

The first time that Mme. Favoral saw her son struck, she was seized with one of those wild fits of anger which do not reason, and never forgive. To be beaten herself would have seemed to her less atrocious, less humiliating. Hitherto she had found it impossible to love a husband such as hers: henceforth, she took him in utter aversion: he inspired her with horror. She looked upon her son as a martyr for whom she could hardly ever do enough.

And so, after these harrowing scenes, she would press him to her heart in the most passionate embrace; she would cover with her kisses the traces of the blows; and she would strive, by the most delirious caresses, to make him forget the paternal brutalities. With him she sobbed. Like him, she would shake her clinched fists in the vacant space; exclaiming, “Coward, tyrant, assassin!” The little Gilberte mingled her tears with theirs; and, pressed against each other, they deplored their destiny, cursing the common enemy, the head of the family.

Thus did Maxence spend his boyhood between equally fatal exaggerations, between the revolting brutalities of his father, and the dangerous caresses of his mother; the one depriving him of every thing, the other refusing him nothing.

For Mme. Favoral had now found a use for her humble savings.

If the idea had never come to the cashier of the Mutual Credit Society to put a few sous in his son’s pocket, the too weak mother would have suggested to him the want of money in order to have the pleasure of gratifying it.

She who had suffered so many humiliations in her life, she could not bear the idea of her son having his pride wounded, and being unable to indulge in those little trifling expenses which are the vanity of schoolboys.

“Here, take this,” she would tell him on holidays, slipping a few francs into his hands.

Unfortunately, to her present she joined the recommendation not to allow his father to know any thing about it; forgetting that she was thus training Maxence to dissimulate, warping his natural sense of right, and perverting his instincts.

No, she gave; and, to repair the gaps thus made in her treasure, she worked to the point of ruining her sight, with such eager zeal, that the worthy shop-keeper of the Rue St. Denis asked her if she did not employ working girls. In truth, the only help she received was from Gilberte, who, at the age of eight, already knew how to make herself useful.

And this is not all. For this son, in anticipation of growing expenses, she stooped to expedients which formerly would have seemed to her unworthy and disgraceful. She robbed the household, cheating on her own marketing. She went so far as to confide to her servant, and to make of the girl the accomplice of her operations. She applied all her ingenuity to serve to M. Favoral dinners in which the excellence of the dressing concealed the want of solid substance. And on Sunday, when she rendered her weekly accounts, it was without a blush that she increased by a few centimes the price of each object, rejoicing when she had thus scraped a dozen francs, and finding, to justify herself to her own eyes, those sophisms which passion never lacks.

At first Maxence was too young to wonder from what sources his mother drew the money she lavished upon his schoolboy fancies. She recommended him to hide from his father: he did so, and thought it perfectly natural.

As he grew older, he learned to discern.

The moment came when he opened his eyes upon the system under which the paternal household was managed. He noticed there that anxious economy which seems to betray want, and the acrimonious discussions which arose upon the inconsiderate use of a twenty-franc-piece. He saw his mother realize miracles of industry to conceal the shabbiness of her toilets, and resort to the most skillful diplomacy when she wished to purchase a dress for Gilberte.

And, despite all this, he had at his disposition as much money as those of his comrades whose parents had the reputation to be the most opulent and the most generous.

Anxious, he questioned his mother.

“Eh, what does it matter?” she answered, blushing and confused. “Is that any thing to worry you?”

And, as he insisted,

“Go ahead,” she said: “we are rich enough.” But he could hardly believe her, accustomed as he was to hear every one talk of poverty; and, as he fixed upon her his great astonished eyes,

“Yes,” she resumed, with an imprudence which fatally was to bear its fruits, “we are rich; and, if we live as you see, it is because it suits your father, who wishes to amass a still greater fortune.”

This was hardly an answer; and yet Maxence asked no further question. But he inquired here and there, with that patient shrewdness of young people possessed with a fixed idea.

Already, at this time, M. Favoral had in the neighborhood, and ever among his friends, the reputation to be worth at least a million. The Mutual Credit Society had considerably developed itself: he must, they thought, have benefitted largely by the circumstance; and the profits must have swelled rapidly in the hands of so able a man, and one so noted for his rigid economy.

Such is the substance of what Maxence heard; and people did not fail to add ironically, that he need not rely upon the paternal fortune to amuse himself.

M. Desormeaux himself, whom he had “pumped” rather cleverly, had told him, whilst patting him amicably on the shoulder,

“If you ever need money for your frolics, young man, try and earn it; for I’ll be hanged if it’s the old man who’ll ever supply it.”

Such answers complicated, instead of explaining, the problem which occupied Maxence.

He observed, he watched; and at last he acquired the certainty that the money he spent was the fruit of the joint labor of his mother and sister.

“Ah! why not have told me so?” he exclaimed, throwing his arms around his mother’s neck. “Why have exposed me to the bitter regrets which I feel at this moment?”

By this sole word the poor woman found herself amply repaid. She admired the _noblesse_ of her son’s feelings and the kindness of his heart.

“Do you not understand,” she told him, shedding tears of joy, “do you not see, that the labor which can promote her son’s pleasure is a happiness for his mother?”

But he was dismayed at his discovery.

“No matter!” he said. “I swear that I shall no longer scatter to the winds, as I have been doing, the money that you give me.”

For a few weeks, indeed, he was faithful to his pledge. But at fifteen resolutions are not very stanch. The impressions he had felt wore off. He became tired of the small privations which he had to impose upon himself.

He soon came to take to the letter what his mother had told him, and to prove to his own satisfaction that to deprive himself of a pleasure was to deprive her. He asked for ten francs one day, then ten francs another, and gradually resumed his old habits.

He was at this time about leaving school.

“The moment has come,” said M. Favoral, “for him to select a career, and support himself.”

X

To think of a profession, Maxence Favoral had not waited for the paternal warnings.

Modern schoolboys are precocious: they know the strong and the weak side of life; and, when they take their degree, they already have but few illusions left.

And how could it be otherwise? In the interior of the colleges is fatally found the echo of the thoughts, and the reflex of the manners, of the time. Neither walls nor keepers can avail. At the same time, as the city mud that stains their boots, the scholars bring back on their return from holidays their stock of observations and of facts.

And what have they seen during the day in their families, or among their friends?

Ardent cravings, insatiable appetites for luxuries, comforts, enjoyments, pleasures, contempt for patient labor, scorn for austere convictions, eager longing for money, the will to become rich at any cost, and the firm resolution to ravish fortune on the first favorable occasion.

To be sure, they have dissembled in their presence; but their perceptions are keen.

True, their father has told them in a grave tone, that there is nothing respectable in this world except labor and honesty; but they have caught that same father scarcely noticing a poor devil of an honest man, and bowing to the earth before some clever rascal bearing the stigma of three judgments, but worth six millions.

Conclusion? Oh! they know very well how to conclude; for there are none such as young people to be logical, and to deduce the utmost consequences of a fact.

They know, the most of them, that they will have to do something or other; but what? And it is then, that, during the recreations, their imagination strives to find that hitherto unknown profession which is to give them fortune without work, and freedom at the same time as a brilliant situation.

They discuss and criticise freely all the careers which are open to youthful ambition. And how they laugh, if some simple fellow ventures upon suggesting some of those modest situations where they earn one hundred and fifty francs a month at the start! One hundred and fifty francs!--why, it’s hardly as much as many a boy spends for his cigars, and his cab-fares when he is late.

Maxence was neither better nor worse than the rest. Like the rest he strove to discover the ideal profession which makes a man rich, and amuses him at the same time.

Under the pretext that he drew nicely, he spoke of becoming a painter, calculating coolly what painting may yield, and reckoning, according to some newspaper, the earnings of Corot or Geroine, Ziem, Bouguereau, and some others, who are reaping at last the fruits of unceasing efforts and crushing labors.

But, in the way of pictures, M. Vincent Favoral appreciated only the blue vignettes of the Bank of France.

“I wish no artists in my family,” he said, in a tone that admitted of no reply.

Maxence would willingly have become an engineer, for it’s rather the style to be an engineer now-a-days; but the examinations for the Polytechnic School are rather steep. Or else a cavalry officer; but the two years at Saint Cyr are not very gay. Or chief clerk, like M. Desormeaux; but he would have to begin by being supernumerary.

Finally after hesitating for a long time between law and medicine, he made up his mind to become a lawyer, influenced above all, by the joyous legends of the Latin quarter.

That was not exactly M. Vincent Favoral’s dream.

“That’s going to cost money again,” he growled.

The fact is, he had indulged in the fallacious hope that his son, as soon as he left college, would enter at once some business-house, where he would earn enough to take care of himself.

He yielded at last, however, to the persistent entreaties of his wife, and the solicitations of his friends.

“Be it so,” he said to Maxence: “you will study law. Only, as it cannot suit me that you should waste your days lounging in the billiard-rooms of the left bank, you shall at the same time work in an attorney’s office. Next Saturday I shall arrange with my friend Chapelain.”

Maxence had not bargained for such an arrangement; and he came near backing out at the prospect of a discipline which he foresaw must be as exacting as that of the college.

Still, as he could think of nothing better, he persevered. And, vacations over, he was duly entered at the law-school, and settled at a desk in M. Chapelain’s office, which was then in the Rue St. Antoine.

The first year every thing went on tolerably. He enjoyed as much freedom as he cared to. His father did not allow him one centime for his pocket-money; but the attorney, in his capacity of an old friend of the family, did for him what he had never done before for an amateur clerk, and allowed him twenty francs a month. Mme. Favoral adding to this a few five-franc pieces, Maxence declared himself entirely satisfied.

Unfortunately, with his lively imagination and his impetuous temper, no one was less fit than himself for that peaceful existence, that steady toil, the same each day, without the stimulus of difficulties to overcome, or the satisfaction of results obtained.

Before long he became tired of it.

He had found at the law-school a number of his old schoolmates whose parents resided in the provinces, and who, consequently, lived as they pleased in the Latin quarter, less assiduous to the lectures than to the Spring Brewery and the Closerie des Lilas.[*]

[ * A noted dancing-garden. ]

He envied them their joyous life, their freedom without control, their facile pleasures, their furnished rooms, and even the low eating-house where they took their meals. And, as much as possible, he lived with them and like them.

But it is not with M. Chapelain’s twenty francs that it would have been possible for him to keep up with fellows, who, with superb recklessness, took on credit everything they could get, reserving the amount of their allowance for those amusements which had to be paid for in cash.

But was not Mme. Favoral here?

She had worked so much, the poor woman, especially since Mlle. Gilberte had become almost a young lady; she had so much saved, so much stinted, that her reserve, notwithstanding repeated drafts, amounted to a good round sum.

When Maxence wanted two or three napoleons, he had but a word to say; and he said it often. Thus, after a while, he became an excellent billiard-player; he kept his colored meerschaum in the rack of a popular brewery; he took absinthe before dinner, and spent his evenings in the laudable effort to ascertain how many mugs of beer he could “put away.” Gaining in audacity, he danced at Bullier’s, dined at Foyd’s, and at last had a mistress.

So much so, that one afternoon, M. Favoral having to visit on business the other side of the water, found himself face to face with his son, who was coming along, a cigar in his mouth, and having on his arm a young lady, painted in superior style, and harnessed with a toilet calculated to make the cab-horses rear.

He returned to the Rue St. Gilles in a state of indescribable rage.

“A woman!” he exclaimed in a tone of offended modesty. “A woman! --he, my son!”

And when that son made his appearance, looking quite sheepish, his first impulse was to resort to his former mode of correction.

But Maxence was now over nineteen years of age.

At the sight of the uplifted cane, he became whiter than his shirt; and, wrenching it from his father’s hands, he broke it across his knees, threw the pieces violently upon the floor, and sprang out of the house.

“He shall never again set his foot here!” screamed the cashier of the Mutual Credit, thrown beside himself by an act of resistance which seemed to him unheard of. “I banish him. Let his clothes be packed up, and taken to some hotel: I never want to see him again.”

For a long time Mme. Favoral and Gilberte fairly dragged themselves at his feet, before he consented to recall his determination.

“He will disgrace us all!” he kept repeating, seeming unable to understand that it was himself who had, as it were, driven Maxence on to the fatal road which he was pursuing, forgetting that the absurd severities of the father prepared the way for the perilous indulgence of the mother, unwilling to own that the head of a family has other duties besides providing food and shelter for his wife and children, and that a father has but little right to complain who has not known how to make himself the friend and the adviser of his son.

At last, after the most violent recriminations, he forgave, in appearance at least.

But the scales had dropped from his eyes. He started in quest of information, and discovered startling enormities.

He heard from M. Chapelain that Maxence remained whole weeks at a time without appearing at the office. If he had not complained before, it was because he had yielded to the urgent entreaties of Mme. Favoral; and he was now glad, he added, of an opportunity to relieve his conscience by a full confession.

Thus the cashier discovered, one by one, all his son’s tricks. He heard that he was almost unknown at the law-school, that he spent his days in the cafes, and that, in the evening, when he believed him in bed and asleep, he was in fact running out to theatres and to balls.

“Ah! that’s the way, is it?” he thought. “Ah, my wife and children are in league against me,--me, the master. Very well, we’ll see.”

XI

From that morning war was declared.

From that day commenced in the Rue St. Gilles one of those domestic dramas which are still awaiting their Moliere,--a drama of distressing vulgarity and sickening realism, but poignant, nevertheless; for it brought into action tears, blood, and a savage energy.

M. Favoral thought himself sure to win; for did he not have the key of the cash, and is not the key of the cash the most formidable weapon in an age where every thing begins and ends with money?

Nevertheless, he was filled with irritating anxieties.

He who had just discovered so many things which he did not even suspect a few days before, he could not discover the source whence his son drew the money which flowed like water from his prodigal hands.

He had made sure that Maxence had no debts; and yet it could not be with M. Chapelain’s monthly twenty francs that he fed his frolics.

Mme. Favoral and Gilberte, subjected separately to a skillful interrogatory, had managed to keep inviolate the secret of their mercenary labor. The servant, shrewdly questioned, had said nothing that could in any way cause the truth to be suspected.

Here was, then, a mystery; and M. Favoral’s constant anxiety could be read upon his knitted brows during his brief visits to the house; that is, during dinner.

From the manner in which he tasted his soup, it was easy to see that he was asking himself whether that was real soup, and whether he was not being imposed upon. From the expression of his eyes, it was easy to guess this question constantly present to his mind.

“They are robbing me evidently; but how do they do it?”

And he became distrustful, fussy, and suspicious, to an extent that he had never been before. It was with the most insulting precautions that he examined every Sunday his wife’s accounts. He took a look at the grocer’s, and settled it himself every month: he had the butcher’s bills sent to him in duplicate. He would inquire the price of an apple as he peeled it over his plate, and never failed to stop at the fruiterer’s and ascertain that he had not been deceived.

But it was all in vain.

And yet he knew that Maxence always had in his pocket two or three five-franc pieces.

“Where do you steal them?” he asked him one day.

“I save them out of my salary,” boldly answered the young man.

Exasperated, M. Favoral wished to make the whole world take an interest in his investigations. And one Saturday evening, as he was talking with his friends, M. Chapelain, the worthy Desclavettes, and old man Desormeaux, pointing to his wife and daughter:

“Those d---d women rob me,” he said, “for the benefit of my son; and they do it so cleverly that I can’t find out how. They have an understanding with the shop-keepers, who are but licensed thieves; and nothing is eaten here that they don’t make me pay double its value.”

M. Chapelain made an ill-concealed grimace; whilst M. Desclavettes sincerely admired a man who had courage enough to confess his meanness.

But M. Desormeaux never minced things.

“Do you know, friend Vincent,” he said, “that it requires a strong stomach to take dinner with a man who spends his time calculating the cost of every mouthful that his guests swallow?”

M. Favoral turned red in the face.

“It is not the expense that I deplore,” he replied, “but the duplicity. I am rich enough, thank Heaven! not to begrudge a few francs; and I would gladly give to my wife twice as much as she takes, if she would only ask it frankly.”

But that was a lesson.

Hereafter he was careful to dissimulate, and seemed exclusively occupied in subjecting his son to a system of his invention, the excessive rigor of which would have upset a steadier one than he.

He demanded of him daily written attestations of his attendance both at the law-school and at the lawyer’s office. He marked out the itinerary of his walks for him, and measured the time they required, within a few minutes. Immediately after dinner he shut him up in his room, under lock and key, and never failed, when he came home at ten o’clock to make sure of his presence.

He could not have taken steps better calculated to exalt still more Mme. Favoral’s blind tenderness.

When she heard that Maxence had a mistress, she had been rudely shocked in her most cherished feelings. It is never without a secret jealousy that a mother discovers that a woman has robbed her of her son’s heart. She had retained a certain amount of spite against him on account of disorders, which, in her candor, she had never suspected. She forgave him every thing when she saw of what treatment he was the object.

She took sides with him, believing him to be the victim of a most unjust persecution. In the evening, after her husband had gone out, Gilberte and herself would take their sewing, sit in the hall outside his room, and converse with him through the door. Never had they worked so hard for the shop-keeper in the Rue St. Denis. Some weeks they earned as much as twenty-five or thirty francs.

But Maxence’s patience was exhausted; and one morning he declared resolutely that he would no longer attend the law-school, that he had been mistaken in his vocation, and that there was no human power capable to make him return to M. Chapelain’s.

“And where will you go?” exclaimed his father. “Do you expect me eternally to supply your wants?”

He answered that it was precisely in order to support himself, and conquer his independence, that he had resolved to abandon a profession, which, after two years, yielded him twenty francs a month.

“I want some business where I have a chance to get rich,” he replied. “I would like to enter a banking-house, or some great financial establishment.”

Mme. Favoral jumped at the idea.

“That’s a fact,” she said to her husband. “Why couldn’t you find a place for our son at the Mutual Credit? There he would be under your own eyes. Intelligent as he is, backed by M. de Thaller and yourself, he would soon earn a good salary.”

M. Favoral knit his brows.

“That I shall never do,” he uttered. “I have not sufficient confidence in my son. I cannot expose myself to have him compromise the consideration which I have acquired for myself.”

And, revealing to a certain extent the secret of his conduct:

“A cashier,” he added, “who like me handles immense sums cannot be too careful of his reputation. Confidence is a delicate thing in these times, when there are so many cashiers constantly on the road to Belgium. Who knows what would be thought of me, if I was known to have such a son as mine?”

Mme. Favoral was insisting, nevertheless, when he seemed to make up his mind suddenly.

“Enough,” he said. “Maxence is free. I allow him two years to establish himself in some position. That delay over, good-by: he can find board and lodging where he please. That’s all. I don’t want to hear any thing more about it.”

It was with a sort of frenzy that Maxence abused that freedom; and in less than two weeks he had dissipated three months’ earnings of his mother and sister.

That time over, he succeeded, thanks to M. Chapelain, in finding a place with an architect.

This was not a very brilliant opening; and the chances were, that he might remain a clerk all his life. But the future did not trouble him much. For the present, he was delighted with this inferior position, which assured him each month one hundred and seventy-five francs.

One hundred and seventy-five francs! A fortune. And so he rushed into that life of questionable pleasures, where so many wretches have left not only the money which they had, which is nothing, but the money which they had not, which leads straight to the police-court.

He made friends with those shabby fellows who walk up and down in front of the Cafe Riche, with an empty stomach, and a tooth-pick between their teeth. He became a regular customer at those low cafes of the Boulevards, where plastered girls smile to the men. He frequented those suspicious table d’hotes where they play baccarat after dinner on a wine-stained table-cloth, and where the police make periodical raids. He ate suppers in those night restaurants where people throw the bottles at each other’s heads after drinking their contents.

Often he remained twenty-four hours without coming to the Rue St. Gilles; and then Mme. Favoral spent the night in the most fearful anxiety. Then, suddenly, at some hour when he knew his father to be absent, he would appear, and, taking his mother to one side:

“I very much want a few louis,” he would say in a sheepish tone.

She gave them to him; and she kept giving them so long as she had any, not, however, without observing timidly to him that Gilberte and herself could not earn very much.

Until finally one evening, and to a last demand:

“Alas!” she answered sorrowfully, “I have nothing left, and it is only on Monday that we are to take our work back. Couldn’t you wait until then?”

He could not wait: he was expected for a game. Blind devotion begets ferocious egotism. He wanted his mother to go out and borrow the money from the grocer or the butcher. She was hesitating. He spoke louder.

Then Mlle. Gilberte appeared.

“Have you, then, really no heart?” she said. “It seems to me, that, if I were a man, I would not ask my mother and sister to work for me.”

XII

Gilberte Favoral had just completed her eighteenth year. Rather tall, slender, her every motion betrayed the admirable proportions of her figure, and had that grace which results from the harmonious blending of litheness and strength. She did not strike at first sight; but soon a penetrating and indefinable charm arose from her whole person; and one knew not which to admire most,--the exquisite perfections of her figure, the divine roundness of her neck, her aerial carriage, or the placid ingenuousness of her attitudes. She could not be called beautiful, inasmuch as her features lacked regularity; but the extreme mobility of her countenance, upon which could be read all the emotions of her soul, had an irresistible seduction. Her large eyes, of velvety blue, had untold depths and an incredible intensity of expression; the imperceptible quiver of her rosy nostrils revealed an untamable pride; and the smile that played upon her lips told her immense contempt for every thing mean and small. But her real beauty was her hair,--of a blonde so luminous that it seemed powdered with diamond-dust; so thick and so long, that to be able to twist and confine it, she had to cut off heavy locks of it to the very root.

Alone, in the house, she did not tremble at her father’s voice. The studied despotism which had subdued Mme. Favoral had revolted her, and her energy had become tempered under the same system of oppression which had unnerved Maxence.

Whilst her mother and her brother lied with that quiet impudence of the slave, whose sole weapon is duplicity, Gilberte preserved a sullen silence. And if complicity was imposed upon her by circumstances, if she had to maintain a falsehood, each word cost her such a painful effort, that her features became visibly altered.

Never, when her own interests were alone at stake, had she stooped to an untruth. Fearlessly, and whatever might be the result,

“That is the fact,” she would say.

Accordingly, M. Favoral could not help respecting her to a degree; and, when he was in fine humor, he called her the Empress Gilberte. For her alone he had some deference and some attentions. He moderated, when she looked at him, the brutality of his language. He brought her a few flowers every Saturday.

He had even allowed her a professor of music; though he was wont to declare that a woman needs but two accomplishments,--to cook and to sew. But she had insisted so much, that he had at last discovered for her, in an attic of the Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule, an old Italian master, the Signor Gismondo Pulei, a sort of unknown genius, for whom thirty francs a month were a fortune, and who conceived a sort of religious fanaticism for his pupil.

Though he had always refused to write a note, he consented, for her sake, to fix the melodies that buzzed in his cracked brain; and some of them proved to be admirable. He dreamed to compose for her an opera that would transmit to the most remote generations the name of Gismondo Pulei.

“The Signora Gilberte is the very goddess of music,” he said to M. Favoral, with transports of enthusiasm, which intensified still his frightful accent.

The cashier of the Mutual Credit Society shrugged his shoulders, answering that there is no harmony for a man who spends his days listening to the exciting music of golden coins. In spite of which his vanity seemed highly gratified, when on Saturday evenings, after dinner, Mlle. Gilberte sat at the piano, and Mme. Desclavettes, suppressing a yawn, would exclaim,

“What remarkable talent the dear child has!”

The young girl had, then, a positive influence; and it was to her entreaties alone, and not to those of his wife, that he had several times forgiven Maxence. He would have done much more for her, had she wished it; but she would have been compelled to ask, to insist, to beg.

“And it’s humiliating,” she used to say.

Sometimes Mme. Favoral scolded her gently, saying that her father would certainly not refuse her one of those pretty toilets which are the ambition and the joy of young girls.

But she:

“It is much less mortification to me to wear these rags than to meet with a refusal,” she replied. “I am satisfied with my dresses.”

With such a character, surrounded, however, by a meek resignation, and an unalterable _sang-froid_, she inspired a certain respect to both her mother and her brother, who admired in her an energy of which they felt themselves incapable.

And when she appeared, and commenced reproaching him in an indignant tone of voice, with the baseness of his conduct, and his insatiate demands, Maxence was almost stunned.

“I did not know,” he commenced, turning as red as fire.

She crushed him with a look of mingled contempt and pity; and, in an accent of haughty irony:

“Indeed,” she said, “you do not know whence the money comes that you extort from our mother!”

And holding up her hand, still remarkably handsome, though slightly deformed by the constant handling of the needle; the fourth finger of the right hand bent by the thread, and the fore-finger of the left tattooed and lacerated by the needle:

“Indeed,” she repeated, “you do not know that my mother and myself, we spend all our days, and the greater part of our nights, working?”

Hanging his head, he said nothing.

“If it were for myself alone,” she continued, “I would not speak to you thus. But look at our mother! See her poor eyes, red and weak from her ceaseless labor! If I have said nothing until now, it is because I did not as yet despair of your heart; because I hoped that you would recover some feeling of decency. But no, nothing. With time, your last scruples seem to have vanished. Once you begged humbly; now you demand rudely. How soon will you resort to blows?”

“Gilberte!” stammered the poor fellow, “Gilberte!”

She interrupted him:

“Money!” she went on, “always, and without time, you must have money; no matter whence it comes, nor what it costs. If, at least, you had to justify your expenses, the excuse of some great passion, or of some object, were it absurd, ardently pursued! But I defy you to confess upon what degrading pleasures you lavish our humble economies. I defy you to tell us what you mean to do with the sum that you demand to-night,--that sum for which you would have our mother stoop to beg the assistance of a shop-keeper, to whom we would be compelled to reveal the secret of our shame.”

Touched by the frightful humiliation of her son:

“He is so unhappy!” stammered Mme. Favoral.

“He unhappy!” she exclaimed. “What, then, shall we say of us? and, above all, what shall you say of yourself, mother? Unhappy!--he, a man, who has liberty and strength, who may undertake every thing, attempt any thing, dare any thing. Ah, I wish I were a man! I! I would be a man as there are some, as I know some; and I would have avenged you, O beloved mother! long, long ago, from father; and I would have begun to repay you all the good you have done me.”

Mme. Favoral was sobbing.

“I beg of you,” she murmured, “spare him.”

“Be it so,” said the young girl. “But you must allow me to tell him that it is not for his sake that I devote my youth to a mercenary labor. It is for you, adored mother, that you may have the joy to give him what he asks, since it is your only joy.”

Maxence shuddered under the breath of that superb indignation. That frightful humiliation, he felt that he deserved it only too much. He understood the justice of these cruel reproaches. And, as his heart had not yet spoiled with the contact of his boon companions, as he was weak, rather than wicked, as the sentiments which are the honor and pride of a man were not dead within him.

“Ah! you are a brave sister, Gilberte,” he exclaimed; “and what you have just done is well. You have been harsh, but not as much as I deserve. Thanks for your courage, which will give me back mine. Yes, it is a shame for me to have thus cowardly abused you both.”

And, raising his mother’s hand to his lips: “Forgive, mother,” he continued, his eyes overflowing with tears; “forgive him who swears to you to redeem his past, and to become your support, instead of being a crushing burden--”

He was interrupted by the noise of steps on the stairs, and the shrill sound of a whistle.

“My husband!” exclaimed Mme. Favoral,--“your father, my children!”

“Well,” said Mlle. Gilberte coldly.

“Don’t you hear that he is whistling? and do you forget that it is a proof that he is furious? What new trial threatens us again?”

XIII

Mme. Favoral spoke from experience. She had learned, to her cost, that the whistle of her husband, more surely than the shriek of the stormy petrel, announces the storm.--And she had that evening more reasons than usual to fear. Breaking from all his habits, M. Favoral had not come home to dinner, and had sent one of the clerks of the Mutual Credit Society to say that they should not wait for him.

Soon his latch-key grated in the lock; the door swung open; he came in; and, seeing his son:

“Well, I am glad to find you here,” he exclaimed with a giggle, which with him was the utmost expression of anger.

Mme. Favoral shuddered. Still under the impression of the scene which had just taken place, his heart heavy, and his eyes full of tears, Maxence did not answer.

“It is doubtless a wager,” resumed the father, “and you wish to know how far my patience may go.”

“I do not understand you,” stammered the young man.

“The money that you used to get, I know not where, doubtless fails you now, or at least is no longer sufficient, and you go on making debts right and left--at the tailor’s, the shirt maker’s, the jeweler’s. Of course, it’s simple enough. We earn nothing; but we wish to dress in the latest style, to wear a gold chain across our vest, and then we make dupes.”

“I have never made any dupes, father.”

“Bah! And what, then, do you call all these people who came this very day to present me their bills? For they did dare to come to my office! They had agreed to come together, expecting thus to intimidate me more easily. I told them that you were of age, and that your business was none of mine. Hearing this, they became insolent, and commenced speaking so loud, that their voices could be heard in the adjoining rooms. At that very moment, the manager, M. de Thaller, happened to be passing through the hall. Hearing the noise of a discussion, he thought that I was having some difficulty with some of our stockholders, and he came in, as he had a right to. Then I was compelled to confess everything.”

He became excited at the sound of his words, like a horse at the jingle of his bells. And, more and more beside himself:

“That is just what your creditors wished,” he pursued. “They thought I would be afraid of a row, and that I would ‘come down.’ It is a system of blackmailing, like any other. An account is opened to some young rascal; and, when the amount is reasonably large, they take it to the family, saying, ‘Money, or I make row.’ Do you think it is to you, who are penniless, that they give credit? It’s on my pocket that they were drawing,--on my pocket, because they believed me rich. They sold you at exorbitant prices every thing they wished; and they relied on me to pay for trousers at ninety francs, shirts at forty francs, and watches at six hundred francs.”

Contrary to his habit, Maxence did not offer any denial.

“I expect to pay all I owe,” he said.

“You!”

“I give my word I will!”

“And with what, pray?”

“With my salary.”

“You have a salary, then?”

Maxence blushed.

“I have what I earn at my employer’s.”

“What employer?”

“The architect in whose office M. Chapelain helped me to find a place.”

With a threatening gesture, M. Favoral interrupted him.

“Spare me your lies,” he uttered. “I am better posted than you suppose. I know, that, over a month ago, your employer, tired of your idleness, dismissed you in disgrace.”

Disgrace was superfluous. The fact was, that Maxence, returning to work after an absence of five days, had found another in his place.

“I shall find another place,” he said.

M. Favoral shrugged his shoulders with a movement of rage.

“And in the mean time,” he said, “I shall have to pay. Do you know what your creditors threaten to do?--to commence a suit against me. They would lose it, of course, they know it; but they hope that I would yield before a scandal. And this is not all: they talk of entering a criminal complaint. They pretend that you have audaciously swindled them; that the articles you purchased of them were not at all for your own use, but that you sold them as fast as you got them, at any price you could obtain, to raise ready money. The jeweler has proofs, he says, that you went straight from his shop to the pawnbroker’s, and pledged a watch and chain which he had just sold you. It is a police matter. They said all that in presence of my superior officer--in presence of M. de Thaller. I had to get the janitor to put them out. But, after they had left, M. de Thaller gave me to understand that he wished me very much to settle everything. And he is right. My consideration could not resist another such scene. What confidence can be placed in a cashier whose son behaves in this manner? How can a key of a safe containing millions be left with a man whose son would have been dragged into the police-courts? In a word, I am at your mercy. In a word, my honor, my position, my fortune, rest upon you. As often as it may please you to make debts, you can make them, and I shall be compelled to pay.”

Gathering all his courage:

“You have been sometimes very harsh with me, father,” commenced Maxence; “and yet I will not try to justify my conduct. I swear to you, that hereafter you shall have nothing to fear from me.”

“I fear nothing,” uttered M. Favoral with a sinister smile. “I know the means of placing myself beyond the reach of your follies --and I shall use them.”

“I assure you, father, that I have taken a firm resolution.”

“Oh! you may dispense with your periodical repentance.”

Mlle. Gilberte stepped forward.

“I’ll stand warrant,” she said, “for Maxence’s resolutions.”

Her father did not permit her to proceed.

“Enough,” he interrupted somewhat harshly. “Mind your own business, Gilberte! I have to speak to you too.”

“To me, father?”

“Yes.”

He walked up and down three or four times through the parlor, as if to calm his irritation. Then planting himself straight before his daughter, his arms folded across his breast:

“You are eighteen years of age,” he said; “that is to say, it is time to think of your marriage. An excellent match offers itself.”

She shuddered, stepped back, and, redder than a peony:

“A match!” she repeated in a tone of immense surprise.

“Yes, and which suits me.”

“But I do not wish to marry, father.”

“All young girls say the same thing; and, as soon as a pretender offers himself, they are delighted. Mine is a fellow of twenty-six, quite good looking, amiable, witty, and who has had the greatest success in society.”

“Father, I assure you that I do not wish to leave mother.”

“Of course not. He is an intelligent, hard-working man, destined, everybody says, to make an immense fortune. Although he is rich already, for he holds a controlling interest in a stock-broker’s firm, he works as hard as any poor devil. I would not be surprised to hear that he makes half a million of francs a year. His wife will have her carriage, her box at the opera, diamonds, and dresses as handsome as Mlle. de Thaller’s.”

“Eh! What do I care for such things?”

“It’s understood. I’ll present him to you on Saturday.”

But Mlle. Gilberte was not one of those young girls who allow themselves, through weakness or timidity, to become engaged, and so far engaged, that later, they can no longer withdraw. A discussion being unavoidable, she preferred to have it out at once.

“A presentation is absolutely useless, father,” she declared resolutely.

“Because?”

“I have told you that I did not wish to marry.”

“But if it is my will?”

“I am ready to obey you in every thing except that.”

“In that as in every thing else,” interrupted the cashier of the Mutual Credit in a thundering voice.

And, casting upon his wife and children a glance full of defiance and threats:

“In that, as in every thing else,” he repeated, “because I am the master; and I shall prove it. Yes, I will prove it; for I am tired to see my family leagued against my authority.”

And out he went, slamming the door so violently, that the partitions shook.

“You are wrong to resist your father thus,” murmured the weak Mme. Favoral.

The fact is, that the poor woman could not understand why her daughter refused the only means at her command to break off with her miserable existence.

“Let him present you this young man,” she said. “You might like him.”

“I am sure I shall not like him.”

She said this in such a tone, that the light suddenly flashed upon Mme. Favoral’s mind.

“Heavens!” she murmured. “Gilberte, my darling child, have you then a secret which your mother does not know?”

XIV

Yes, Mlle. Gilberte had her secret--a very simple one, though, chaste, like herself, and one of those which, as the old women say, must cause the angels to rejoice.

The spring of that year having been unusually mild, Mme. Favoral and her daughter had taken the habit of going daily to breathe the fresh air in the Place Royale. They took their work with them, crotchet or knitting; so that this salutary exercise did not in any way diminish the earnings of the week. It was during these walks that Mlle. Gilberte had at last noticed a young man, unknown to her, whom she met every day at the same place.

Tall and robust, he had a grand look, notwithstanding his modest clothes, the exquisite neatness of which betrayed a sort of respectable poverty. He wore his full beard; and his proud and intelligent features were lighted up by a pair of large black eyes, of those eyes whose straight and clear look disconcerts hypocrites and knaves.

He never failed, as he passed by Mlle. Gilberte, to look down, or turn his head slightly away; and in spite of this, in spite of the expression of respect which she had detected upon his face, she could not help blushing.

“Which is absurd,” she thought; “for after all, what on earth do I care for that young man?”

The infallible instinct, which is the experience of inexperienced young girls, told her that it was not chance alone that brought this stranger in her way. But she wished to make sure of it. She managed so well, that each day of the following week, the hour of their walk was changed. Sometimes they went out at noon, sometimes after four o’clock.

But, whatever the hour, Mlle. Gilberte, as she turned the corner of the Rue des Minimes, noticed her unknown admirer under the arcades, looking in some shop-window, and watching out of the corner of his eye. As soon as she appeared, he left his post, and hurried fast enough to meet her at the gate of the Place.

“It is a persecution,” thought Mlle. Gilberte.

How, then, had she not spoken of it to her mother? Why had she not said any thing to her the day, when, happening, to look out of the window, she saw her “persecutor” passing before the house, or, evidently looking in her direction?

“Am I losing my mind?” she thought, seriously irritated against herself. “I will not think of him any more.”

And yet she was thinking of him, when one afternoon, as her mother and herself were working, sitting upon a bench, she saw the stranger come and sit down not far from them. He was accompanied by an elderly man with long white mustaches, and wearing the rosette of the Legion of Honor.

“This is an insolence,” thought the young girl, whilst seeking a pretext to ask her mother to change their seats.

But already had the young man and his elderly friend seated themselves, and so arranged their chairs, that Mlle. Gilberte could not miss a word of what they were about to say. It was the young man who spoke first.

“You know me as well as I know myself, my dear count,” he commenced --“you who were my poor father’s best friend, you who dandled me upon your knees when I was a child, and who has never lost sight of me.”

“Which is to say, my boy, that I answer for you as for myself,” put in the old man. “But go on.”

“I am twenty-six years old. My name is Yves-Marius-Genost de Tregars. My family, which is one of the oldest of Brittany, is allied to all the great families.”

“Perfectly exact,” remarked the old gentleman.

“Unfortunately, my fortune is not on a par with my nobility. When my mother died, in 1856, my father, who worshiped her, could no longer bear, in the intensity of his grief, to remain at the Chateau de Tregars where he had spent his whole life. He came to Paris, which he could well afford, since we were rich then, but unfortunately, made acquaintances who soon inoculated him with the fever of the age. They proved to him that he was mad to keep lands which barely yielded him forty thousand francs a year, and which he could easily sell for two millions; which amount, invested merely at five per cent, would yield him an income of one hundred thousand francs. He therefore sold every thing, except our patrimonial homestead on the road from Quimper to Audierne, and rushed into speculations. He was rather lucky at first. But he was too honest and too loyal to be lucky long. An operation in which he became interested early in 1869 turned out badly. His associates became rich; but he, I know not how, was ruined, and came near being compromised. He died of grief a month later.”

The old soldier was nodding his assent.

“Very well, my boy,” he said. “But you are too modest; and there’s a circumstance which you neglect. You had a right, when your father became involved in these troubles, to claim and retain your mother’s fortune; that is, some thirty thousand francs a year. Not only you did not do so; but you gave up every thing to his creditors. You sold the domain of Tregars, except the old castle and its park, and paid over the proceeds to them; so that, if your father did die ruined, at least he did not owe a cent. And yet you knew, as well as myself, that your father had been deceived and swindled by a lot of scoundrels who drive their carriages now, and who, perhaps, if the courts were applied to, might still be made to disgorge their ill-gotten plunder.”

Her head bent upon her tapestry, Mlle. Gilberte seemed to be working with incomparable zeal. The truth is, she knew not how to conceal the blushes on her cheeks, and the trembling of her hands. She had something like a cloud before her eyes; and she drove her needle at random. She scarcely preserved enough presence of mind to reply to Mme. Favoral, who, not noticing any thing, spoke to her from time to time.

Indeed, the meaning of this scene was too clear to escape her.

“They have had an understanding,” she thought, “and it is for me alone that they are speaking.”

Meantime, Marius de Tregars was going on:

“I should lie, my old friend, were I to say that I was indifferent to our ruin. Philosopher though one may be, it is not without some pangs that one passes from a sumptuous hotel to a gloomy garret. But what grieved me most of all was that I saw myself compelled to give up the labors which had been the joy of my life, and upon which I had founded the most magnificent hopes. A positive vocation, stimulated further by the accidents of my education, had led me to the study of physical sciences. For several years, I had applied all I have of intelligence and energy to certain investigations in electricity. To convert electricity into an incomparable motive-power which would supersede steam,--such was the object I pursued without pause. Already, as you know, although quite young, I had obtained results which had attracted some attention in the scientific world. I thought I could see the last of a problem, the solution of which would change the face of the globe. Ruin was the death of my hopes, the total loss of the fruits of my labors; for my experiments were costly, and it required money, much money, to purchase the products which were indispensable to me, and to construct the machines which I contrived.

“And I was about being compelled to earn my daily bread.

“I was on the verge of despair, when I met a man whom I had formerly seen at my father’s, and who had seemed to take some interest in my researches, a speculator named Marcolet. But it is not at the bourse that he operates. Industry is the field of his labors. Ever on the lookout for those obstinate inventors who are starving to death in their garrets, he appears to them at the hour of supreme crisis: he pities them, encourages them, consoles them, helps them, and almost always succeeds in becoming the owner of their discovery. Sometimes he makes a mistake; and then all he has to do is to put a few thousand francs to the debit of profit or loss. But, if he has judged right, then he counts his profits by hundreds of thousands; and how many patents does he work thus! Of how many inventions does he reap the results which are a fortune, and the inventors of which have no shoes to wear! Every thing is good to him; and he defends with the same avidity a cough-sirup, the formula of which he has purchased of some poor devil of a druggist, and an improvement to the steam-engine, the patent for which has been sold to him by an engineer of genius. And yet Marcolet is not a bad man. Seeing my situation, he offered me a certain yearly sum to undertake some studies of industrial chemistry which he indicated to me. I accepted; and the very next day I hired a small basement in the Rue des Tournelles, where I set up my laboratory, and went to work at once. That was a year ago. Marcolet must be satisfied. I have already found for him a new shade for dyeing silk, the cost price of which is almost nothing. As to me, I have lived with the strictest economy, devoting all my surplus earnings to the prosecution of the problem, the solution of which would give me both glory and fortune.”

Palpitating with inexpressible emotion, Mlle. Gilberte was listening to this young man, unknown to her a few moments since, and whose whole history she now knew as well as if she had always lived near him; for it never occurred to her to suspect his sincerity.

No voice had ever vibrated to her ear like this voice, whose grave sonorousness stirred within her strange sensations, and legions of thoughts which she had never suspected. She was surprised at the accent of simplicity with which he spoke of the illustriousness of his family, of his past opulence, of his obscure labors, and of his exalted hopes.

She admired the superb disregard for money which beamed forth in his every word. Here was then one man, at least, who despised that money before which she had hitherto seen all the people she knew prostrated in abject worship.

After a pause of a few moments, Marius de Tregars, still addressing himself apparently to his aged companion, went on:

“I repeat it, because it is the truth, my old friend, this life of labor and privation, so new to me, was not a burden. Calm, silence, the constant exercise of all the faculties of the intellect, have charms which the vulgar can never suspect. I was happy to think, that, if I was ruined, it was through an act of my own will. I found a positive pleasure in the fact that I, the Marquis de Tregars, who had had a hundred thousand a year--I must the next moment go out in person to the baker’s and the green-grocer’s to purchase my supplies for the day. I was proud to think that it was to my labor alone, to the work for which I was paid by Marcolet, that I owed the means of prosecuting my task. And, from the summits where I was carried on the wings of science, I took pity on your modern existence, on that ridiculous and tragical medley of passions, interests, and cravings; that struggle without truce or mercy, whose law is, woe to the weak, in which whosoever falls is trampled under feet.

“Sometimes, however, like a fire that has been smouldering under the ashes, the flame of youthful passions blazed up within me. I had hours of madness, of discouragement, of distress, during which solitude was loathsome to me. But I had the faith which raises mountains--faith in myself and my work. And soon, tranquilized, I would go to sleep in the purple of hope, beholding in the vista of the distant future the triumphal arches erected to my success.

“Such was my situation, when, one afternoon in the month of February last, after an experiment upon which I had founded great hopes, and which had just miserably failed, I came here to breathe a little fresh air.

“It was a beautiful spring day, warm and sunny. The sparrows were chirping on the branches, swelled with sap: bands of children were running along the alleys, filling the air with their joyous screams.

“I was sitting upon a bench, ruminating over the causes of my failure, when two ladies passed by me; one somewhat aged, the other quite young. They were walking so rapidly, that I hardly had time to see them.

“But the young lady’s step, the noble simplicity of her carriage, had struck me so much, that I rose to follow her with the intention of passing her, and then walking back to have a good view of her face. I did so; and I was fairly dazzled. At the moment when my eyes met hers, a voice rose within me, crying that it was all over now, and that my destiny was fixed.”

“I remember, my dear boy,” remarked the old soldier in a tone of friendly raillery; “for you came to see me that night, and I had not seen you for months before.”

Marius proceeded without heeding the remark.

“And yet you know that I am not the man to yield to first impression. I struggled: with determined energy I strove to drive off that radiant image which I carried within my soul, which left me no more, which haunted me in the midst of my studies.

“Vain efforts. My thoughts obeyed me no longer--my will escaped my control. It was indeed one of those passions that fill the whole being, overpower all, and which make of life an ineffable felicity or a nameless torture, according that they are reciprocated, or not. How many days I spent there, waiting and watching for her of whom I had thus had a glimpse, and who ignored my very existence! And what insane palpitations, when, after hours of consuming anxiety, I saw at the corner of the street the undulating folds of her dress! I saw her thus often, and always with the same elderly person, her mother. They had adopted in this square a particular bench, where they sat daily, working at their sewing with an assiduity and zeal which made me think that they lived upon the product of their labor.”

Here he was suddenly interrupted by his companion. The old gentleman feared that Mme. Favoral’s attention might at last be attracted by too direct allusions.

“Take care, boy!” he whispered, not so low, however, but what Gilberte overheard him.

But it would have required much more than this to draw Mme. Favoral from her sad thoughts. She had just finished her band of tapestry; and, grieving to lose a moment:

“It is perhaps time to go home,” she said to her daughter. “I have nothing more to do.”

Mlle. Gilberte drew from her basket a piece of canvas, and, handing it to her mother:

“Here is enough to go on with, mamma,” she said in a troubled voice. “Let us stay a little while longer.”

And, Mme. Favoral having resumed her work, Marius proceeded:

“The thought that she whom I loved was poor delighted me. Was not this similarity of positions a link between us? I felt a childish joy to think that I would work for her and for her mother, and that they would be indebted to me for their ease and comfort in life.

“But I am not one of those dreamers who confide their destiny to the wings of a chimera. Before undertaking any thing, I resolved to inform myself. Alas! at the first words that I heard, all my fine dreams took wings. I heard that she was rich, very rich. I was told that her father was one of those men whose rigid probity surrounds itself with austere and harsh forms. He owed his fortune, I was assured, to his sole labor, but also to prodigies of economy and the most severe privations. He professed a worship, they said, for that gold that had cost him so much; and he would never give the hand of his daughter to a man who had no money. This last comment was useless. Above my actions, my thoughts, my hopes, higher than all, soars my pride. Instantly I saw an abyss opening between me and her whom I love more than my life, but less than my dignity. When a man’s name is Genost de Tregars, he must support his wife, were it by breaking stones. And the thought that I owed my fortune to the woman I married would make me execrate her.

“You must remember, my old friend, that I told you all this at the time. You thought, too, that it was singularly impertinent, on my part, thus to flare up in advance, because, certainly a millionaire does not give his daughter to a ruined nobleman in the pay of Marcolet, the patent-broker, to a poor devil of an inventor, who is building the castles of his future upon the solution of a problem which has been given up by the most brilliant minds.

“It was then that I determined upon an extreme resolution, a foolish one, no doubt, and yet to which you, the Count de Villegre, my father’s old friend, you have consented to lend yourself.

“I thought that I would address myself to her, to her alone, and that she would at least know what great, what immense love she had inspired. I thought I would go to her and tell her, ‘This is who I am, and what I am. For mercy’s sake, grant me a respite of three years. To a love such as mine there is nothing impossible. In three years I shall be dead, or rich enough to ask your hand. From this day forth, I give up my task for work of more immediate profit. The arts of industry have treasures for successful inventors. If you could only read in my soul, you would not refuse me the delay I am asking. Forgive me! One word, for mercy’s sake, only one! It is my sentence that I am awaiting.’”

Mlle. Gilberte’s thoughts were in too great a state of confusion to permit her to think of being offended at this extraordinary proceeding. She rose, quivering, and addressing herself to Mme. Favoral:

“Come, mother,” she said, “come: I feel that I have taken cold. I must go home and think. To-morrow, yes, to-morrow, we will come again.”

Deep as Mme. Favoral was plunged in her meditations, and a thousand miles as she was from the actual situation, it was impossible that she should not notice the intense excitement under which her daughter labored, the alteration of her features, and the incoherence of her words.

“What is the matter?” she asked, somewhat alarmed. “What are you saying?”

“I feel unwell,” answered her daughter in a scarcely audible voice, “quite unwell. Come, let us go home.”

As soon as they reached home, Mlle. Gilberte took refuge in her own room. She was in haste to be alone, to recover her self-possession, to collect her thoughts, more scattered than dry leaves by a storm wind.

It was a momentous event which had just suddenly fallen in her life so monotonous and so calm--an inconceivable, startling event, the consequences of which were to weigh heavily upon her entire future.

Staggering still, she was asking herself if she was not the victim of an hallucination, and if really there was a man who had dared to conceive and execute the audacious project of coming thus under the eyes of her mother, of declaring his love, and of asking her in return a solemn engagement. But what stupefied her more still, what confused her, was that she had actually endured such an attempt.

Under what despotic influence had she, then, fallen? To what undefinable sentiments had she obeyed? And if she had only tolerated! But she had done more: she had actually encouraged. By detaining her mother when she wished to go home (and she had detained her), had she not said to this unknown?--“Go on, I allow it: I am listening.”

And he had gone on. And she, at the moment of returning home, she had engaged herself formally to reflect, and to return the next day at a stated hour to give an answer. In a word, she had made an appointment with him.

It was enough to make her die of shame. And, as if she had needed the sound of her own words to convince herself of the reality of the fact, she kept repeating loud,

“I have made an appointment--I, Gilberte, with a man whom my parents do not know, and of whose name I was still ignorant yesterday.”

And yet she could not take upon herself to be indignant at the imprudent boldness of her conduct. The bitterness of the reproaches which she was addressing to herself was not sincere. She felt it so well, that at last:

“Such hypocrisy is unworthy of me,” she exclaimed, “since now, still, and without the excuse of being taken by surprise, I would not act otherwise.”

The fact is, the more she pondered, the less she could succeed in discovering even the shadow of any offensive intention in all that Marius de Tregars had said. By the choice of his confidant, an old man, a friend of his family, a man of the highest respectability, he had done all in his power to make his step excusable. It was impossible to doubt his sincerity, to suspect the fairness of his intentions.

Mlle. Gilberte, better than almost any other young girl, could understand the extreme measure resorted to by M. de Tregars. By her own pride she could understand his. No more than he, in his place, would she have been willing to expose herself to a certain refusal. What was there, then, so extraordinary in the fact of his coming directly to her, in his exposing to her frankly and loyally his situation, his projects, and his hopes?

“Good heavens!” she thought, horrified at the sentiments which she discovered in the deep recesses of her soul, “good heavens! I hardly know myself any more. Here I am actually approving what he has done!”

Well, yes, she did approve him, attracted, fascinated, by the very strangeness of the situation. Nothing seemed to her more admirable than the conduct of Marius de Tregars sacrificing his fortune and his most legitimate aspirations to the honor of his name, and condemning himself to work for his living.

“That one,” she thought, “is a man; and his wife will have just cause to be proud of him.”

Involuntarily she compared him to the only men she knew: to M. Favoral, whose miserly parsimony had made his whole family wretched; to Maxence, who did not blush to feed his disorders with the fruits of his mother’s and his sister’s labor.

How different was Marius! If he was poor, it was of his own will. Had she not seen what confidence he had in himself. She shared it fully. She felt certain that, within the required delay, he would conquer that indispensable fortune. Then he might present himself boldly. He would take her, away from the miserable surroundings among which she seemed fated to live: she would become the Marchioness de Tregars.

“Why, then, not answer, Yes!” thought she, with the harrowing emotions of the gambler who is about to stake his all upon one card. And what a game for Mlle. Gilberte, and what a stake!

Suppose she had been mistaken. Suppose that Marius should be one of those villains who make of seduction a science. Would she still be her own mistress, after answering? Did she know to what hazards such an engagement would expose her? Was she not about rushing blindfolded towards those deceiving perils where a young girl leaves her reputation, even when she saves her honor?

She thought, for a moment, of consulting her mother. But she knew Mme. Favoral’s shrinking timidity, and that she was as incapable of giving any advice as to make her will prevail. She would be frightened; she would approve all; and, at the first alarm, she would confess all.

“Am I, then, so weak and so foolish,” she thought, “that I cannot take a determination which affects me personally?”

She could not close her eyes all night; but in the morning her resolution was settled.

And toward one o’clock:

“Are we not going out mother?” she said.

Mme. Favoral was hesitating.

“These early spring days are treacherous,” she objected: “you caught cold yesterday.”

“My dress was too thin. To-day I have taken my precautions.”

They started, taking their work with them, and came to occupy their accustomed seats.

Before they had even passed the gates, Mlle. Gilberte had recognized Marius de Tregars and the Count de Villegre, walking in one of the side alleys. Soon, as on the day before, they took two chairs, and settled themselves within hearing.

Never had the young girl’s heart beat with such violence. It is easy enough to take a resolution; but it is not always quite so easy to execute it, and she was asking herself if she would have strength enough to articulate a word. At last, gathering her whole courage:

“You don’t believe in dreams, do you mother?” she asked.

Upon this subject, as well as upon many others, Mme. Favoral had no particular opinion.

“Why do you ask the question?” said she.

“Because I have had such a strange one.”

“Oh!”

“It seemed to me that suddenly a young man, whom I did not know, stood before me. He would have been most happy, said he to me, to ask my hand, but he dared not, being very poor. And he begged me to wait three years, during which he would make his fortune.”

Mme. Favoral smiled.

“Why it’s quite a romance,” said she.

“But it wasn’t a romance in my dream,” interrupted Mlle. Gilberte. “This young man spoke in a tone of such profound conviction, that it was impossible for me, as it were, to doubt him. I thought to myself that he would be incapable of such an odious villainy as to abuse the confiding credulity of a poor girl.”

“And what did you answer him?”

Moving her seat almost imperceptibly, Mlle. Gilberte could, from the corner of her eye, have a glimpse of M. de Tregars. Evidently he was not missing a single one of the words which she was addressing to her mother. He was whiter than a sheet; and his face betrayed the most intense anxiety.

This gave her the energy to curb the last revolts of her conscience.

“To answer was painful,” she uttered; “and yet I--dared to answer him. I said to him, ‘I believe you, and I have faith in you. Loyally and faithfully I shall await your success; but until then we must be strangers to one another. To resort to ruse, deceit, and falsehood would be unworthy of us. You surely would not expose to a suspicion her who is to be your wife.’”

“Very well,” approved Mme. Favoral; “only I did not know you were so romantic.”

She was laughing, the good lady, but not loud enough to prevent Gilberte from hearing M. de Tregars’ answer.

“Count de Villegre,” said he, “my old friend, receive the oath which I take to devote my life to her who has not doubted me. It is to-day the 4th of May, 1870--on the 4th of May, 1873, I shall have succeeded: I feel it, I will it, it must be!”

XV

It was done: Gilberte Favoral had just irrevocably disposed of herself. Prosperous or wretched, her destiny henceforth was linked with another. She had set the wheel in motion; and she could no longer hope to control its direction, any more than the will can pretend to alter the course of the ivory ball upon the surface of the roulette-table. At the outset of this great storm of passion which had suddenly surrounded her, she felt an immense surprise, mingled with unexplained apprehensions and vague terrors.

Around her, apparently, nothing was changed. Father, mother, brother, friends, gravitated mechanically in their accustomed orbits. The same daily facts repeated themselves monotonous and regular as the tick-tack of the clock.

And yet an event had occurred more prodigious for her than the moving of a mountain.

Often during the weeks that followed, she would repeat to herself, “Is it true, is it possible even?”

Or else she would run to a mirror to make sure once more that nothing upon her face or in her eyes betrayed the secret that palpitated within her.

The singularity of the situation was, moreover, well calculated to trouble and confound her mind.

Mastered by circumstances, she had in utter disregard of all accepted ideas, and of the commonest propriety, listened to the passionate promises of a stranger, and pledged her life to him. And, the pact concluded and solemnly sworn, they had parted without knowing when propitious circumstances might bring them together again.

“Certainly,” thought she, “before God, M. de Tregars is my betrothed husband; and yet we have never exchanged a word. Were we to meet in society, we should be compelled to meet as strangers: if he passes by me in the street, he has no right to bow to me. I know not where he is, what becomes of him, nor what he is doing.”

And in fact she had not seen him again: he had given no sign of life, so faithfully did he conform to her expressed wish. And perhaps secretly, and without acknowledging it to herself, had she wished him less scrupulous. Perhaps she would not have been very angry to see him sometimes gliding along at her passage under the old Arcades of the Rue des Vosges.

But, whilst suffering from this separation, she conceived for the character of Marius the highest esteem; for she felt sure that he must suffer as much and more than she from the restraint which he imposed upon himself.

Thus he was ever present to her thoughts. She never tired of turning over in her mind all he had said of his past life: she tried to remember his words, and the very tone of his voice.

And by living constantly thus with the memory of Marius de Tregars, she made herself familiar with him, deceived to that extent, by the illusion of absence, that she actually persuaded herself that she knew him better and better every day.

Already nearly a month had elapsed, when one afternoon, as she arrived on the Place Royal; she recognized him, standing near that same bench where they had so strangely exchanged their pledges.

He saw her coming too: she knew it by his looks. But, when she had arrived within a few steps of him, he walked off rapidly, leaving on the bench a folded newspaper.

Mme. Favoral wished to call him back and return it; but Mlle. Gilberte persuaded her not to.

“Never mind, mother,” said she, “it isn’t worth while; and, besides, the gentleman is too far now.”

But while getting out her embroidery, with that dexterity which never fails even the most naive girls, she slipped the newspaper in her work-basket.

Was she not certain that it had been left there for her?

As soon as she had returned home, she locked herself up in her own room, and, after searching for some time through the columns, she read at last:

“One of the richest and most intelligent manufacturers in Paris, M. Marcolet, has just purchased in Grenelle the vast grounds belonging to the Lacoche estate. He proposes to build upon them a manufacture of chemical products, the management of which is to be placed in the hands of M. de T--.

“Although still quite young, M. de T---- is already well known in connection with his remarkable studies on electricity. He was, perhaps, on the eve of solving the much controverted problem of electricity as a motive-power, when his father’s ruin compelled him to suspend his labors. He now seeks to earn by his personal industry the means of prosecuting his costly experiments.

“He is not the first to tread this path. Is it not to the invention of the machine bearing his name, that the engineer Giffard owes the fortune which enables him to continue to seek the means of steering balloons? Why should not M. de T--, who has as much skill and energy, have as much luck?”

“Ah! he does not forget me,” thought Mlle. Gilberte, moved to tears by this article, which, after all, was but a mere puff, written by Marcolet himself, without the knowledge of M. de Tregars.

She was still under that impression, thinking that Marius was already at work, when her father announced to her that he had discovered a husband, and enjoined her to find him to her liking, as he, the master, thought it proper that she should.

Hence the energy of her refusal.

But hence also, the imprudent vivacity which had enlightened Mme. Favoral, and which made her say:

“You hide something from me, Gilberte?”

Never had the young girl been so cruelly embarrassed as she was at this moment by this sudden and unforeseen perspicacity.

Would she confide to her mother?

She felt, indeed, no repugnance to do so, certain as she was, in advance, of the inexhaustible indulgence of the poor woman; and, besides, she would have been delighted to have some one at last with whom she could speak of Marius.

But she knew that her father was not the man to give up a project conceived by himself. She knew that he would return to the charge obstinately, without peace, and without truce. Now, as she was determined to resist with a no less implacable obstinacy, she foresaw terrible struggles, all sorts of violence and persecutions.

Informed of the truth, would Mme. Favoral have strength enough to resist these daily storms? Would not a time come, when, called upon by her husband to explain the refusals of her daughter, threatened, terrified, she would confess all?

At one glance Mlle. Gilberte estimated the danger; and, drawing from necessity an audacity which was very foreign to her nature:

“You are mistaken, dear mother,” said she, “I have concealed nothing from you.”

Not quite convinced, Mme. Favoral shook her head.

“Then,” said she, “you will yield.”

“Never!”

“Then there must be some reason you do not tell me.”

“None, except that I do not wish to leave you. Have you ever thought what would be your existence if I were no longer here? Have you ever asked yourself what would become of you, between my father, whose despotism will grow heavier with age, and my brother?”

Always prompt to defend her son:

“Maxence is not bad,” she interrupted: “he will know how to compensate me for the sorrows he has inflicted upon me.”

The young girl made a gesture of doubt:

“I wish it, dear mother,” said she, “with all my heart; but I dare not hope for it. His repentance to-night was great and sincere; but will he remember it to-morrow? Besides, don’t you know that father has fully resolved to separate himself from Maxence? Think of yourself alone here with father.”

Mme. Favoral shuddered at the mere idea.

“I would not suffer very long,” she murmured. Mlle. Gilberte kissed her.

“It is because I wish you to live to be happy that I refuse to marry,” she exclaimed. “Must you not have your share of happiness in this world? Let me manage. Who knows what compensations the future may have in store for you? Besides, this person whom father has selected for me does not suit me. A stock-jobber, who would think of nothing but money,--who would examine my house-accounts as papa does yours, or else who would load me with cashmeres and diamonds, like Mme. de Thaller, to make of me a sign for his shop? No, no! I want no such man. So, mother dear, be brave, take sides boldly with your daughter, and we shall soon be rid of this would-be husband.”

“Your father will bring him to you: he said he would.”

“Well, he is a man of courage, if he returns three times.”

At this moment the parlor-door opened suddenly.

“What are you plotting here again?” cried the irritated voice of the master. “And you, Mme. Favoral, why don’t you go to bed?”

The poor slave obeyed, without saying a word. And, whilst making her way to her room:

“There is trouble ahead,” thought Mlle. Gilberte. “But bash! If I do have to suffer some, it won’t be great harm, after all. Surely Marius does not complain, though he gives up for me his dearest hopes, becomes the salaried employe of M. Marcolet, and thinks of nothing but making money,--he so proud and so disinterested!”

Mlle. Gilberte’s anticipations were but too soon realized. When M. Favoral made his appearance the next morning, he had the sombre brow and contracted lips of a man who has spent the night ruminating a plan from which he does not mean to swerve.

Instead of going to his office, as usual, without saying a word to any one, he called his wife and children to the parlor; and, after having carefully bolted all the doors, he turned to Maxence.

“I want you,” he commenced, “to give me a list of your creditors. See that you forget none; and let it be ready as soon as possible.”

But Maxence was no longer the same man. After the terrible and well-deserved reproaches of his sister, a salutary revolution had taken place in him. During the preceding night, he had reflected over his conduct for the past four years; and he had been dismayed and terrified. His impression was like that of the drunkard, who, having become sober, remembers the ridiculous or degrading acts which he has committed under the influence of alcohol, and, confused and humiliated, swears never more to drink.

Thus Maxence had sworn to himself to change his mode of life, promising that it would be no drunkard’s oath, either. And his attitude and his looks showed the pride of great resolutions.

Instead of lowering his eyes before the irritated glance of M. Favoral, and stammering excuses and vague promises:

“It is useless, father,” he replied, “to give you the list you ask for. I am old enough to bear the responsibility of my acts. I shall repair my follies: what I owe, I shall pay. This very day I shall see my creditors, and make arrangements with them.”

“Very well, Maxence,” exclaimed Mme. Favoral, delighted.

But there was no pacifying the cashier of the Mutual Credit.

“Those are fine-sounding words,” he said with a sneer; “but I doubt if the tailors and the shirt-makers will take them in payment. That’s why I want that list.”

“Still--”

“It’s I who shall pay. I do not mean to have another such scene as that of yesterday in my office. It must not be said that my son is a sharper and a cheat at the very moment when I find for my daughter a most unhoped-for match.”

And, turning to Mlle. Gilberte:

“For I suppose you have got over your foolish ideas,” he uttered.

The young girl shook her head.

“My ideas are the same as they were last night.”

“Ah, ah!”

“And so, father, I beg of you, do not insist. Why wrangle and quarrel? You must know me well enough to know, that, whatever may happen, I shall never yield.”

Indeed, M. Favoral was well aware of his daughter’s firmness; for he had already been compelled on several occasions, as he expressed it himself, “to strike his flag” before her. But he could not believe that she would resist when he took certain means of enforcing his will.

“I have pledged my word,” he said.

“But I have not pledged mine, father.”

He was becoming excited: his cheeks were flushed; and his little eyes sparkled.

“And suppose I were to tell you,” he resumed, doing at least to his daughter the honor of controlling his anger: “suppose I were to tell you that I would derive from this marriage immense, positive, and immediate advantages?”

“Oh!” she interrupted with a look of disgust, “oh, for mercy’s sake!”

“Suppose I were to tell you that I have a powerful interest in it; that it is indispensable to the success of vast combinations?”

Mlle. Gilberte looked straight at him.

“I would answer you,” she exclaimed, “that it does not suit me to be made use of as an earnest to your combinations. Ah! it’s an operation, is it? an enterprise, a big speculation? and you throw in your daughter in the bargain as a bonus. Well, no! You can tell your partner that the thing has fallen through.”

M. Favoral’s anger was growing with each word.

“I’ll see if I can’t make you yield,” he said.

“You may crush me, perhaps. Make me yield, never!”

“Well, we shall see. You will see--Maxence and you--whether there are no means by which a father can compel his rebellious children to submit to his authority.”

And, feeling that he was no longer master of himself, he left, swearing loud enough to shake the plaster from the stair-walls.

Maxence shook with indignation.

“Never,” he uttered, “never until now, had I understood the infamy of my conduct. With a father such as ours, Gilberte, I should be your protector. And now I am debarred even of the right to interfere. But never mind, I have the will; and all will soon be repaired.”

Left alone, a few moments after, Mlle. Gilberte was congratulating herself upon her firmness.

“I am sure,” she thought, “Marius would approve, if he knew.”

She had not long to wait for her reward. The bell rang: it was her old professor, the Signor Gismondo Pulei, who came to give her his daily lesson.

The liveliest joy beamed upon his face, more shriveled than an apple at Easter; and the most magnificent anticipations sparkled in his eyes.

“I knew it, signora!” he exclaimed from the threshold: “I knew that angels bring good luck. As every thing succeeds to you, so must every thing succeed to those who come near you.”

She could not help smiling at the appropriateness of the compliment.

“Something fortunate has happened to you, dear master?” she asked.

“That is to say, I am on the high-road to fortune and glory,” he replied. “My fame is extending; pupils dispute the privilege of my lesson.”

Mlle. Gilberte knew too well the thoroughly Italian exaggeration of the worthy maestro to be surprised.

“This morning,” he went on, “visited by inspiration, I had risen early, and I was working with marvelous facility, when there was a knock at my door. I do not remember such an occurrence since the blessed day when your worthy father called for me. Surprised, I nevertheless said, ‘Come in;’ when there appeared a tall and robust young man, proud and intelligent-looking.”

The young girl started.

“Marius!” cried a voice within her.

“This young man,” continued the old Italian, “had heard me spoken of, and came to apply for lessons. I questioned him; and from the first words I discovered that his education had been frightfully neglected, that he was ignorant of the most vulgar notions of the divine art, and that he scarcely knew the difference between a sharp and a quaver. It was really the A, B, C, which he wished me to teach him. Laborious task, ungrateful labor! But he manifested so much shame at his ignorance, and so much desire to be instructed, that I felt moved in his favor. Then his countenance was most winning, his voice of a superior tone; and finally he offered me sixty francs a month. In short, he is now my pupil.”

As well as she could, Mlle. Gilberte was hiding her blushes behind a music-book.

“We remained over two hours talking,” said the good and simple maestro, “and I believe that he has excellent dispositions. Unfortunately, he can only take two lessons a week. Although a nobleman, he works; and, when he took off his glove to hand me a month in advance, I noticed that one of his hands was blackened, as if burnt by some acid. But never mind, signora, sixty francs, together with what your father gives me, it’s a fortune. The end of my career will be spared the privations of its beginning. This young man will help making me known. The morning has been dark; but the sunset will be glorious.”

The young girl could no longer have any doubts: M. de Tregars had found the means of hearing from her, and letting her hear from him.

The impression she felt contributed no little to give her the patience to endure the obstinate persecution of her father, who, twice a day, never failed to repeat to her:

“Get ready to properly receive my protege on Saturday. I have not invited him to dinner: he will only spend the evening with us.”

And he mistook for a disposition to yield the cold tone in which she answered:

“I beg you to believe that this introduction is wholly unnecessary.”

Thus, the famous day having come, he told his usual Saturday guests, M. and Mme. Desclavettes, M. Chapelain, and old man Desormeaux:

“Eh, eh! I guess you are going to see a future son-in-law!”

At nine o’clock, just as they had passed into the parlor, the sound of carriage-wheels startled the Rue St. Gilles.

“There he is!” exclaimed the cashier of the Mutual Credit.

And, throwing open a window:

“Come, Gilberte,” he added, “come and see his carriage and horses.”

She never stirred; but M. Desclavettes and M. Chapelain ran. It was night, unfortunately; and of the whole equipage nothing was visible but the two lanterns that shone like stars. Almost at the same time the parlor-door flew open; and the servant, who had been properly trained in advance, announced:

“Monsieur Costeclar.”

Leaning toward Mme. Favoral, who was seated by her side on the sofa,

“A nice-looking man, isn’t he? a really nice-looking man,” whispered Mme. Desclavettes.

And indeed he really thought so himself. Gesture, attitude, smile, every thing in M. Costeclar, betrayed the satisfaction of self, and the assurance of a man accustomed to success. His head, which was very small, had but little hair left; but it was artistically drawn towards the temples, parted in the middle, and cut short around the forehead. His leaden complexion, his pale lips, and his dull eye, did not certainly betray a very rich blood; he had a great long nose, sharp and curved like a sickle; and his beard, of undecided color, trimmed in the Victor Emmanuel style, did the greatest honor to the barber who cultivated it. Even when seen for the first time, one might fancy that he recognized him, so exactly was he like three or four hundred others who are seen daily in the neighborhood of the Cafe Riche, who are met everywhere where people run who pretend to amuse themselves,--at the bourse or in the bois; at the first representations, where they are just enough hidden to be perfectly well seen at the back of boxes filled with young ladies with astonishing chignons; at the races; in carriages, where they drink champagne to the health of the winner.

He had on this occasion hoisted his best looks, and the full dress _de rigueur_--dress-coat with wide sleeves, shirt cut low in the neck, and open vest, fastened below the waist by a single button.

“Quite the man of the world,” again remarked Mme. Desclavettes.

M. Favoral rushed toward him; and the latter, hastening, met him half way, and, taking both his hands into his--“I cannot tell you, dear friend,” he commenced, “how deeply I feel the honor you do me in receiving me in the midst of your charming family and your respectable friends.”

And he bowed all around during this speech, which he delivered in the condescending tone of a lord visiting his inferiors.

“Let me introduce you to my wife,” interrupted the cashier. And, leading him towards Mme. Favoral--“Monsieur Costeclar, my dear,”
said he: “the friend of whom we have spoken so often.”

M. Costeclar bowed, rounding his shoulders, bending his lean form in a half-circle, and letting his arms hang forward.

“I am too much the friend of our dear Favoral, madame,” he uttered, “not to have heard of you long since, nor to know your merits, and the fact that he owes to you that peaceful happiness which he enjoys, and which we all envy him.”

Standing by the mantel-piece, the usual Saturday evening guests followed with the liveliest interest the evolutions of the pretender. Two of them, M. Chapelain and old Desormeaux, were perfectly able to appreciate him at his just value; but, in affirming that he made half a million a year, M. Favoral had, as it were, thrown over his shoulders that famous ducal cloak which concealed all deformities.

Without waiting for his wife’s answer, M. Favoral brought his protege in front of Mlle. Gilberte.

“Dear daughter,” said he, “Monsieur Costeclar, the friend of whom I have spoken.”

M. Costeclar bowed still lower, and rounded off his shoulders again; but the young lady looked at him from head to foot with such a freezing glance, that his tongue remained as if paralyzed in his mouth, and he could only stammer out:

“Mademoiselle! the honor, the humblest of your admirers.”

Fortunately Maxence was standing three steps off--he fell back in good order upon him, and seizing his hand, which he shook vigorously:

“I hope, my dear sir, that we shall soon be quite intimate friends. Your excellent father, whose special concern you are, has often spoken to me of you. Events, so he has confided to me, have not hitherto responded to your expectations. At your age, this is not a very grave matter. People, now-a-days, do not always find at the first attempt the road that leads to fortune. You will find yours. From this time forth I place at your command my influence and my experience; and, if you will consent to take me for your guide--”

Maxence had withdrawn his hand.

“I am very much obliged to you, sir,” he answered coldly; “but I am content with my lot, and I believe myself old enough to walk alone.”

Almost any one would have lost countenance. But M. Costeclar was so little put out, that it seemed as though he had expected just such a reception. He turned upon his heels, and advanced towards M. Favoral’s friends with a smile so engaging as to make it evident that he was anxious to conquer their suffrages.

This was at the beginning of the month of June, 1870. No one as yet could foresee the frightful disasters which were to mark the end of that fatal year. And yet there was everywhere in France that indefinable anxiety which precedes great social convulsions. The plebiscitum had not succeeded in restoring confidence. Every day the most alarming rumors were put in circulation and it was with a sort of passion that people went in quest of news.

Now, M. Costeclar was a wonderfully well-posted man. He had, doubtless, on his way, stopped on the Boulevard des Italiens, that blessed ground where nightly the street-brokers labor for the financial prosperity of the country. He had gone through the Passage de l’Opera, which is, as is well known, the best market for the most correct and the most reliable news. Therefore he might safely be believed.

Placing his back to the chimney, he had taken the lead in the conversation; and he was talking, talking, talking. Being a “bull,”
he took a favorable view of every thing. He believed in the eternity of the second empire. He sang the praise of the new cabinet: he was ready to pour out his blood for Emile Ollivier. True, some people complained that business was dull and slow; but those people, he thought, were merely “bears.” Business had never been so brilliant. At no time had prosperity been greater. Capital was abundant. The institutions of credit were flourishing. Securities were rising. Everybody’s pockets were full to bursting. And the others listened in astonishment to this inexhaustible prattle, this “gab,” more filled with gold spangles than Dantzig cordial, with which the commercial travelers of the bourse catch their customers.

Suddenly:

“But you must excuse me,” he said, rushing towards the other end of the parlor.

Mme. Favoral had just left the room to order tea to be brought in; and, the seat by Mlle. Gilberte being vacant, M. Costeclar occupied it promptly.

“He understands his business,” growled M. Desormeaux.

“Surely,” said M. Desclavettes, “if I had some funds to dispose of just now.”

“I would be most happy to have him for my son-in-law,” declared M. Favoral.

He was doing his best. Somewhat intimidated by Mlle. Gilberte’s first look, he had now fully recovered his wits.

He commenced by sketching his own portrait.

He had just turned thirty, and had experienced the strong and the weak side of life. He had had “successes,” but had tired of them. Having gauged the emptiness of what is called pleasure, he only wished now to find a partner for life, whose graces and virtues would secure his domestic happiness.

He could not help noticing the absent look of the young girl; but he had, thought he, other means of compelling her attention. And he went on, saying that he felt himself cast of the metal of which model husbands are made. His plans were all made in advance. His wife would be free to do as she pleased. She would have her own carriage and horses, her box at the Italiens and at the Opera, and an open account at Worth’s and Van Klopen’s. As to diamonds, he would take care of that. He meant that his wife’s display of wealth should be noticed; and even spoken of in the newspapers.

Was this the terms of a bargain that he was offering?

If so, it was so coarsely, that Mlle. Gilberte, ignorant of life as she was, wondered in what world it might be that he had met with so many “successes.” And, somewhat indignantly:

“Unfortunately,” she said, “the bourse is perfidious; and the man who drives his own carriage to-day, to-morrow may have no shoes to wear.”

M. Costeclar nodded with a smile.

“Exactly so,” said he. “A marriage protects one against such reverses.

“Every man in active business, when he marries, settles upon his wife reasonable fortune. I expect to settle six hundred thousand francs upon mine.”

“So that, if you were to meet with an--accident?”

“We should enjoy our thirty thousand a year under the very nose of the creditors.”

Blushing with shame, Mlle. Gilberte rose.

“But then,” said she, “it isn’t a wife that you are looking for: it is an accomplice.”

He was spared the embarrassment of an answer, by the servant, who came in, bringing in tea. He accepted a cup; and after two or three anecdotes, judging that he had done enough for a first visit, he withdrew, and a moment later they heard his carriage driving off at full gallop.

XVI

It was not without mature thought that M. Costeclar had determined to withdraw, despite M. Favoral’s pressing overtures. However infatuated he might be with his own merits, he had been compelled to surrender to evidence, and to acknowledge that he had not exactly succeeded with Mlle. Gilberte. But he also knew that he had the head of the house on his side; and he flattered himself that he had produced an excellent impression upon the guests of the house.

“Therefore,” had he said to himself, “if I leave first, they will sing my praise, lecture the young person, and make her listen to reason.”

He was not far from being right. Mme. Desclavettes had been completely subjugated by the grand manners of this pretender; and M. Desclavettes did not hesitate to affirm that he had rarely met any one who pleased him more.

The others, M. Chapelain and old Desormeaux, did not, doubtless, share this optimism; but M. Costeclar’s annual half-million obscured singularly their clear-sightedness.

They thought perhaps, they had discovered in him some alarming features; but they had full and entire confidence in their friend Favoral’s prudent sagacity.

The particular and methodic cashier of the Mutual Credit was not apt to be enthusiastic; and, if he opened the doors of his house to a young man, if he was so anxious to have him for his son-in-law, he must evidently have taken ample information.

Finally there are certain family matters from which sensible people keep away as they would from the plague; and, on the question of marriage especially, he is a bold man who would take side for or against.

Thus Mme. Desclavettes was the only one to raise her voice. Taking Mlle. Gilberte’s hands within hers:

“Let me scold you, my dear,” said she, “for having received thus a poor young man who was only trying to please you.”

Excepting her mother, too weak to take her defence, and her brother, who was debarred from interfering, the young girl understood readily, that, in that parlor, every one, overtly or tacitly, was against her. The idea came to her mind to repeat there boldly what she had already told her father that she was resolved not to marry, and that she would not marry, not being one of those weak girls, without energy, whom they dress in white, and drag to church against their will.

Such a bold declaration would be in keeping with her character. But she feared a terrible, and perhaps degrading scene. The most intimate friends of the family were ignorant of its most painful sores. In presence of his friends, M. Favoral dissembled, speaking in a mild voice, and assuming a kindly smile. Should she suddenly reveal the truth?

“It is childish of you to run the risk of discouraging a clever fellow who makes half a million a year,” continued the wife of the old bronze-merchant, to whom such conduct seemed an abominable crime of _lese-money_. Mlle. Gilberte had withdrawn her hands.

“You did not hear what he said, madame.”

“I beg your pardon: I was quite near, and involuntarily--”

“You have heard his--propositions?”

“Perfectly. He was promising you a carriage, a box at the opera, diamonds, freedom. Isn’t that the dream of all young ladies?”

“It is not mine, madame!”

“Dear me! What better can you wish? You must not expect more from a husband than he can possibly give.”

“That is not what I shall expect of him.”

In a tone of paternal indulgence, which his looks belied:

“She is mad,” suggested M. Favoral.

Tears of indignation filled Mlle. Gilberte’s eyes.

“Mme. Desclavettes,” she exclaimed, “forgets something. She forgets that this gentleman dared to tell me that he proposed to settle upon the woman he marries a large fortune, of which his creditors would thus be cheated in case of his failure in business.”

She thought, in her simplicity, that a cry of indignation would rise at these words. Instead of which:

“Well, isn’t it perfectly natural?” said M. Desclavettes.

“It seems to me more than natural,” insisted Mme. Desclavettes, “that a man should be anxious to preserve from ruin his wife and children.”

“Of course,” put in M. Favoral.

Stepping resolutely toward her father:

“Have you, then, taken such precautions yourself?” demanded Mlle. Gilberte.

“No,” answered the cashier of the Mutual Credit. And, after a moment of hesitation:

“But I am running no risks,” he added. “In business, and when a man may be ruined by a mere rise or fall in stocks, he would be insane indeed who did not secure bread for his family, and, above all, means for himself, wherewith to commence again. The Baron de Thaller did not act otherwise; and, should he meet with a disaster, Mme. de Thaller would still have a handsome fortune.”

M. Desormeaux was, perhaps, the only one not to admit freely that theory, and not to accept that ever-decisive reason, “Others do it.”

But he was a philosopher, and thought it silly not to be of his time. He therefore contented himself with saying:

“Hum! M. de Thaller’s creditors might not think that mode of proceeding entirely regular.”

“Then they might sue,” said M. Chapelain, laughing. “People can always sue; only when the papers are well drawn--”

Mlle. Gilberte stood dismayed. She thought of Marius de Tregars giving up his mother’s fortune to pay his father’s debts.

“What would he say,” thought she, “should he hear such opinions!”

The cashier of the Mutual Credit resumed:

“Surely I blame every species of fraud. But I pretend, and I maintain, that a man who has worked twenty years to give a handsome dowry to his daughter has the right to demand of his son-in-law certain conservative measures to guarantee the money, which, after all, is his own, and which is to benefit no one but his own family.”

This declaration closed the evening. It was getting late. The Saturday guests put on their overcoats; and, as they were walking home,

“Can you understand that little Gilberte?” said Mme. Desclavettes. “I’d like to see a daughter of mine have such fancies! But her poor mother is so weak!”

“Yes; but friend Favoral is firm enough for both,” interrupted M. Desormeaux; “and it is more than probable that at this very moment he is correcting his daughter of the sin of sloth.”

Well, not at all. Extremely angry as M. Favoral must have been, neither that evening, nor the next day, did he make the remotest allusion to what had taken place.

The following Monday only, before leaving for his office, casting upon his wife and daughter one of his ugliest looks:

“M. Costeclar owes us a visit,” said he; “and it is possible that he may call in my absence. I wish him to be admitted; and I forbid you to go out, so that you can have no pretext to refuse him the door. I presume there will not be found in my house any one bold enough to ill receive a man whom I like, and whom I have selected for my son-in-law.”

But was it probable, was it even possible, that M. Costeclar could venture upon such a step after Mlle. Gilberte’s treatment of him on the previous Saturday evening?

“No, a thousand times no!” affirmed Maxence to his mother and sister. “So you may rest easy.”

Indeed they tried to be, until that very afternoon the sound of rapidly-rolling wheels attracted Mme. Favoral to the window. A coupe, drawn by two gray horses, had just stopped at the door.

“It must be he,” she said to her daughter.

Mlle. Gilberte had turned slightly pale.

“There is no help for it, mother,” she said: “You must receive him.”

“And you?”

“I shall remain in my room.”

“Do you suppose he won’t ask for you?”

“You will answer that I am unwell. He will understand.”

“But your father, unhappy child, your father?”

“I do not acknowledge to my father the right of disposing of my person against my wishes. I detest that man to whom he wishes to marry me. Would you like to see me his wife, to know me given up to the most intolerable torture? No, there is no violence in the world that will ever wring my consent from me. So, mother dear, do what I ask you. My father can say what he pleases: I take the whole responsibility upon myself.”

There was no time to argue: the bell rang. Mlle. Gilberte had barely time to escape through one of the doors of the parlor, whilst M. Costeclar was entering at the other.

If he did have enough perspicacity to guess what had just taken place, he did not in any way show it. He sat down; and it was only after conversing for a few moments upon indifferent subjects, that he asked how Mlle. Gilberte was.

“She is somewhat--unwell,” stammered Mme. Favoral.

He did not appear surprised; only,

“Our dear Favoral,” he said, “will be still more pained than I am when he hears of this mishap.”

Better than any other mother, Mme. Favoral must have understood and approved Mlle. Gilberte’s invincible repugnance. To her also, when she was young, her father had come one day, and said, “I have discovered a husband for you.” She had accepted him blindly. Bruised and wounded by daily outrages, she had sought refuge in marriage as in a haven of safety.

And since, hardly a day had elapsed that she had not thought it would have been better for her to have died rather then to have riveted to her neck those fetters that death alone can remove. She thought, therefore, that her daughter was perfectly right. And yet twenty years of slavery had so weakened the springs of her energy, that under the glance of Costeclar, threatening her with her husband’s name, she felt embarrassed, and could scarcely stammer some timid excuses. And she allowed him to prolong his visit, and consequently her torment, for over an half an hour; then, when he had gone,

“He and your father understand each other,” said she to her daughter, “that is but too evident. What is the use of struggling?”

A fugitive blush colored the pale cheeks of Mlle. Gilberte. For the past forty-eight hours she had been exhausting herself, seeking an issue to an impossible situation; and she had accustomed her mind to the worst eventualities.

“Do you wish me, then, to desert the paternal roof?” she exclaimed.

Mme. Favoral almost dropped on the floor.

“You would run away,” she stammered, “you!”

“Rather than become that man’s wife, yes!”

“And where would you go, unfortunate child? what would you do?”

“I can earn my living.”

Mme. Favoral shook her head sadly. The same suspicions were reviving within her that she had felt once before.

“Gilberte,” she said in a beseeching tone, “am I, then, no longer your best friend? and will you not tell me from what sources you draw your courage and your resolution?”

And, as her daughter said nothing:

“God alone knows what may happen!” sighed the poor woman.

Nothing happened, but what could have been easily foreseen. When M. Favoral came home to dinner, he was whistling a perfect storm on the stairs. He abstained at first from all recrimination; but towards the end of the meal, with the most sarcastic look he could assume:

“It seems,” he said to his daughter, “that you were unwell this afternoon?”

Bravely, and without flinching, she sustained his look; and, in a firm voice:

“I shall always be indisposed,” she replied, “when M. Costeclar calls. You hear me, don’t you, father--always!”

But the cashier of the Credit Mutual was not one of those men whose wrath finds vent in mere sarcasms. Rising suddenly to his feet:

“By the holy heavens!” he screamed forth, “you are wrong to trifle thus with my will; for, all of you here, I shall crush you as I do this glass.”

And, with a frenzied gesture, he dashed the glass he held in his hand against the wall, where it broke in a thousand pieces. Trembling like a leaf, Mme. Favoral staggered upon her chair.

XVII

“Better kill her at once,” said Mlle. Gilberte coldly. “She would suffer less.”

It was by a torrent of invective that M. Favoral replied. His rage, dammed up for the past four days, finding at last an outlet, flowed in gross insults and insane threats. He spoke of throwing out in the street his wife and children, or starving them out, or shutting up his daughter in a house of correction; until at last, language failing his fury, beside himself, he left, swearing that he would bring M. Costeclar home himself, and then they would see.

“Very well, we shall see,” said Mlle. Gilberte.

Motionless in his place, and white as a plaster cast, Maxence had witnessed this lamentable scene. A gleam of common-sense had enabled him to control his indignation, and to remain silent. He had understood, that, at the first word, his father’s fury would have turned against him; and then what might have happened? The most frightful dramas of the criminal courts have often had no other origin.

“No, this is no longer bearable!” he exclaimed.

Even at the time of his greatest follies, Maxence had always had for his sister a fraternal affection. He admired her from the day she had stood up before him to reproach him for his misconduct. He envied her her quiet determination, her patient tenacity, and that calm energy that never failed her.

“Have patience, my poor Gilberte,” he added: “the day is not far, I hope, when I may commence to repay you all you have done for me. I have not lost my time since you restored me my reason. I have arranged with my creditors. I have found a situation, which, if not brilliant, is at least sufficiently lucrative to enable me before long to offer you, as well as to our mother, a peaceful retreat.”

“But it is to-morrow,” interrupted Mme. Favoral, “to-morrow that your father is to bring M. Costeclar. He has said so, and he will do it.”

And so he did. About two o’clock in the afternoon M. Favoral and his protege arrived in the Rue St. Gilles, in that famous coupe with the two horses, which excited the wonder of the neighbors.

But Mlle. Gilberte had her plan ready. She was on the lookout; and, as soon as she heard the carriage stop, she ran to her room, undressed in a twinkling, and went to bed.

When her father came for her, and saw her in bed, he remained surprised and puzzled on the threshold of the door.

“And yet I’ll make you come into the parlor!” he said in a hoarse voice.

“Then you must carry me there as I am,” she said in a tone of defiance; “for I shall certainly not get up.”

For the first time since his marriage, M. Favoral met in his own house a more inflexible will than his own, and a more unyielding obstinacy. He was baffled. He threatened his daughter with his clinched fists, but could discover no means of making her obey. He was compelled to surrender, to yield.

“This will be settled with the rest,” he growled, as he went out.

“I fear nothing in the world, father,” said the girl.

It was almost true, so much did the thought of Marius de Tregars inflame her courage. Twice already she had heard from him through the Signor Gismondo Pulei, who never tired talking of this new pupil, to whom he had already given two lessons.

“He is the most gallant man in the world,” he said, his eye sparkling with enthusiasm, “and the bravest, and the most generous, and the best; and no quality that can adorn one of God’s creatures shall be wanting in him when I have taught him the divine art. It is not with a little contemptible gold that he means to reward my zeal. To him I am as a second father; and it is with the confidence of a son that he explains to me his labors and his hopes.”

Thus Mlle. Gilberte learned through the old maestro, that the newspaper article she had read was almost exactly true, and that M. de Tregars and M. Marcolet had become associated for the purpose of working, in joint account, certain recent discoveries, which bid fair to yield large profits in a near future.

“And yet it is for my sake alone that he has thus thrown himself into the turmoil of business, and has become as eager for gain as that M. Marcolet himself.”

And, at the height of her father’s persecutions, she felt glad of what she had done, and of her boldness in placing her destiny in the hands of a stranger. The memory of Marius had become her refuge, the element of all her dreams and of all her hopes; in a word, her life.

It was of Marius she was thinking, when her mother, surprising her gazing into vacancy, would ask her, “What are you thinking of?” And, at every new vexation she had to endure, her imagination decked him with a new quality, and she clung to him with a more desperate grasp.

“How much he would grieve,” thought she, “if he knew of what persecution I am the object!”

And very careful was she not to allow the Signor Gismondo Pulei to suspect any thing of it, affecting, on the contrary, in his presence, the most cheerful serenity.

And yet she was a prey to the most cruel anxiety, since she observed a new and most incredible transformation in her father.

That man so violent and so harsh, who flattered himself never to have been bent, who boasted never to have forgotten or forgiven any thing, that domestic tyrant, had become quite a debonair personage. He had referred to the expedient imagined by Mlle. Gilberte only to laugh at it, saying that it was a good trick, and he deserved it; for he repented bitterly, he protested, his past brutalities.

He owned that he had at heart his daughter’s marriage with M. Costeclar; but he acknowledged that he had made use of the surest means for making it fail. He should, he humbly confessed, have expected every thing of time and circumstances, of M. Costeclar’s excellent qualities, and of his beautiful, darling daughter’s good sense.

More than of all his violence, Mme. Favoral was terrified at this affected good nature.

“Dear me!” she sighed, “what does it all mean?”

But the cashier of the Mutual Credit was not preparing any new surprise to his family. If the means were different, it was still the same object that he was pursuing with the tenacity of an insect. When severity had failed, he hoped to succeed by gentleness, that’s all. Only this assumption of hypocritical meekness was too new to him to deceive any one. At every moment the mask fell off, the claws showed, and his voice trembled with ill-suppressed rage in the midst of his most honeyed phrases.

Moreover, he entertained the strangest illusions. Because for forty-eight hours he had acted the part of a good-natured man, because one Sunday he had taken his wife and daughter out riding in the Bois de Vincennes, because he had given Maxence a hundred-franc note, he imagined that it was all over, that the past was obliterated, forgotten, and forgiven.

And, drawing Gilberte upon his knees,

“Well, daughter,” he said, “you see that I don’t importune you any more, and I leave you quite free. I am more reasonable than you are.”

But on the other hand, and according to an expression which escaped him later, he tried to turn the enemy.

He did every thing in his power to spread in the neighborhood the rumor of Mlle. Gilberte’s marriage with a financier of colossal wealth,--that elegant young man who came in a coupe with two horses. Mme. Favoral could not enter a shop without being covertly complimented upon having found such a magnificent establishment for her daughter.

Loud, indeed, must have been the gossip; for its echo reached even the inattentive ears of the Signor Gismondo Pulei.

One day, suddenly interrupting his lesson,--“You are going to be married, signora?” he inquired.

Mlle. Gilberte started.

What the old Italian had heard, he would surely ere long repeat to Marius. It was therefore urgent to undeceive him.

“It is true,” she replied, “that something has been said about a marriage, dear maestro.”

“Ah, ah!”

“Only my father had not consulted me. That marriage will never take place: I swear it.”

She expressed herself in a tone of such ardent conviction, that the old gentleman was quite astonished, little dreaming that it was not to him that this energetic denial was addressed.

“My destiny is irrevocably fixed,” added Mlle. Gilberte. “When I marry, I will consult the inspirations of my heart only.”

In the mean time, it was a veritable conspiracy against her. M. Favoral had succeeded in interesting in the success of his designs his habitual guests, not M. and Mme. Desclavettes, who had been seduced from the first, but M. Chapelain and old Desormeaux himself. So that they all vied with each other in their efforts to bring the “dear child” to reason, and to enlighten her with their counsels.

“Father must have a still more considerable interest in this alliance than he has allowed us to think,” she remarked to her brother. Maxence was also absolutely of the same opinion.

“And then,” he added, “our father must be terribly rich; for, do not deceive yourself, it isn’t solely for your pretty blue eyes that this Costeclar persists in coming here twice a week to pocket a new mortification. What enormous dowry can he be hoping for? I am going to speak to him myself, and try to find out what he is after.”

But Mlle. Gilberte had but slight confidence in her brother’s diplomacy.

“I beg of you,” she said, “don’t meddle with that business!”

“Yes, yes, I will! Fear nothing, I’ll be prudent.”

Having taken his resolution, Maxence placed himself on the lookout; and the very next day, as M. Costeclar was stepping out of his carriage at the door, he walked straight up to him.

“I wish to speak to you, sir,” he said. Self-possessed as he was, the brilliant financier succeeded but poorly in concealing a surprise that looked very much like fright.

“I am going in to call on your parents, sir,” he replied; “and whilst waiting for your father, with whom I have an appointment, I shall be at your command.”

“No, no!” interrupted Maxence. “What I have to say must be heard by you alone. Come along this way, and we shall not be interrupted.”

And he led M. Costeclar away as far as the Place Royal. Once there,

“You are very anxious to marry my sister, sir,” he commenced.

During their short walk M. Costeclar had recovered himself. He had resumed all his impertinent assurance. Looking at Maxence from head to foot with any thing but a friendly look,

“It is my dearest and my most ardent wish, sir,” he replied.

“Very well. But you must have noticed the very slight success, to use no harsher word, of your assiduities.”

“Alas!”

“And, perhaps, you will judge, like myself, that it would be the act of a gentleman to withdraw in presence of such positive repugnance?”

An ugly smile was wandering upon M. Costeclar’s pale lips.

“Is it at the request of your sister, sir, that you make me this communication?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you aware whether your sister has some inclination that may be an obstacle to the realization of my hopes?”

“Sir!”

“Excuse me! What I say has nothing to offend. It might very well be that your sister, before I had the honor of being introduced to her, had already fixed her choice.”

He spoke so loud, that Maxence looked sharply around to see whether there was not some one within hearing. He saw no one but a young man, who seemed quite absorbed reading a newspaper.

“But, sir,” he resumed, “what would you answer, if I, the brother of the young lady whom you wish to marry against her wishes,--I called upon you to cease your assiduities?”

M. Costeclar bowed ceremoniously,

“I would answer you, sir,” he uttered, “that your father’s assent is sufficient for me. My suit has nothing but is honorable. Your sister may not like me: that is a misfortune; but it is not irreparable. When she knows me better, I venture to hope that she will overcome her unjust prejudices. Therefore I shall persist.”

Maxence insisted no more. He was irritated at M. Costeclar’s coolness; but it was not his intention to push things further.

“There will always be time,” he thought, “to resort to violent measures.”

But when he reported this conversation to his sister,

“It is clear,” he said, “that, between our father and that man, there is a community of interests which I am unable to discover. What business have they together? In what respect can your marriage either help or injure them? I must see, try and find out exactly who is this Costeclar: the deuse take him!”

He started out the same day, and had not far to go.

M. Costeclar was one of those personalities which only bloom in Paris, and are only met in Paris,--the same as cab-horses, and young ladies with yellow chignons.

He knew everybody, and everybody knew him.

He was well known at the bourse, in all the principal restaurants, where he called the waiters by their first names, at the box-office of the theatres, at all the pool-rooms, and at the European Club, otherwise called the Nomadic Club, of which he was a member.

He operated at the bourse: that was sure. He was said to own a third interest in a stock-broker’s office. He had a good deal of business with M. Jottras, of the house of Jottras and Brother, and M. Saint Pavin, the manager of a very popular journal, “The Financial Pilot.”

It was further known that he had on Rue Vivienne, a magnificent apartment, and that he had successively honored with his liberal protection Mlle. Sidney of the Varieties, and Mme. Jenny Fancy, a lady of a certain age already, but so situated as to return to her lovers in notoriety what they gave her in good money. So much did Maxence learn without difficulty. As to any more precise details, it was impossible to obtain them. To his pressing questions upon M. Costeclar’s antecedents,

“He is a perfectly honest man,” answered some.

“He is simply a speculator,” affirmed others.

But all agreed that he was a sharp one; who would surely make his fortune, and without passing through the police-courts, either.

“How can our father and such a man be so intimately connected?”
wondered Maxence and his sister.

And they were lost in conjectures, when suddenly, at an hour when he never set his foot in the house, M. Favoral appeared.

Throwing a letter upon his daughter’s lap,

“See what I have just received from Costeclar,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Read.”

She read, “Allow me, dear friend, to release you from your engagement. Owing to circumstances absolutely beyond my control, I find myself compelled to give up the honor of becoming a member of your family.”

What could have happened?

Standing in the middle of the parlor, the cashier of the Mutual Credit held, bowed down beneath his glance, his wife and children, Mme. Favoral trembling, Maxence starting in mute surprise, and Mlle. Gilberte, who needed all the strength of her will to control the explosion of her immense joy.

Every thing in M. Favoral betrayed, nevertheless, much more the excitement of a disaster than the rage of a deception.

Never had his family seen him thus,--livid, his cravat undone, his hair wet with perspiration, and clinging to his temples.

“Will you please explain this letter?” he asked at last.

And, as no one answered him, he took up that letter again from the table where Mlle. Gilberte had laid it, and commenced reading it again, scanning each syllable, as if in hopes of discovering in each word some hidden meaning.

“What did you say to Costeclar?” he resumed, “what did you do to him to make him take such a determination?”

“Nothing,” answered Maxence and Mlle. Gilberte.

The hope of being at last rid of that man inspired Mme. Favoral with something like courage.

“He has doubtless understood,” she meekly suggested, “that he could not triumph over our daughter’s repugnance.”

But her husband interrupted her,

“No,” he uttered, “Costeclar is not the man to trouble himself about the ridiculous caprices of a little girl. There is something else. But what is it? Come, if you know it, any of you, if you suspect it even, speak, say it. You must see that I am in a state of fearful anxiety.”

It was the first time that he thus allowed something to appear of what was passing within him, the first time that he ever complained.

“M. Costeclar alone, father, can give you the explanation you ask of us,” said Mlle. Gilberte.

The cashier of the Mutual Credit shook his head. “Do you suppose, then, that I have not questioned him? I found his letter this morning at the office. At once I ran to his apartments, Rue Vivienne. He had just gone out; and it is in vain that I called for him at Jottras’, and at the office of ‘The Financial Pilot.’ I found him at last at the bourse, after running three hours. But I could only get from him evasive answers and vague explanations. Of course he did not fail to say, that, if he does withdraw, it is because he despairs of ever succeeding in pleasing Gilberte. But it isn’t so: I know it; I am sure of it; I read it in his eyes. Twice his lips moved as if he were about to confess all; and then he said nothing. And the more I insisted, the more he seemed ill at ease, embarrassed, uneasy, troubled, the more he appeared to me like a man who has been threatened, and dares not brave the threat.”

He directed upon his children one of those obstinate looks which search the inmost depths of the conscience.

“If you have done any thing to drive him off,” he resumed, “confess it frankly, and I swear I will not reproach you.”

“We did not.”

“You did not threaten him?”

“No!”

M. Favoral seemed appalled.

“Doubtless you deceive me,” he said, “and I hope you do. Unhappy children! you do not know what this rupture may cost you.”

And, instead of returning to his office, he shut himself up in that little room which he called his study, and only came out of it at about five o’clock, holding under his arm an enormous bundle of papers, and saying that it was useless to wait for him for dinner, as he would not come home until late in the night, if he came home at all, being compelled to make up for his lost day.

“What is the matter with your father, my poor children?” exclaimed Mme. Favoral. “I have never seen him in such a state.”

“Doubtless,” replied Maxence, “the rupture with Costeclar is going to break up some combination.”

But that explanation did not satisfy him any more than it did his mother. He, too, felt a vague apprehension of some impending misfortune. But what? He had nothing upon which to base his conjectures. He knew nothing, any more than his mother, of his father’s affairs, of his relations, of his interests, or even of his life, outside the house.

And mother and son lost themselves in suppositions as vain as if they had tried to find the solution of a problem, without possessing its terms.

With a single word Mlle. Gilberte thought she might have enlightened them.

In the unerring certainty of the blow, in the crushing promptness of the result, she thought she could recognize the hand of Marius de Tregars.

She recognized the hand of the man who acts, and does not talk. And the girl’s pride felt flattered by this victory, by this proof of the powerful energy of the man whom, unknown to all, she had selected. She liked to imagine Marius de Tregars and M. Costeclar in presence of each other,--the one as imperious and haughty as she had seen him meek and trembling; the other more humble still than he was arrogant with her.

“One thing is certain,” she repeated to herself; “and that is, I am saved.”

And she wished the morrow to come, that she might announce her happiness to the very involuntary and very unconscious accomplice of Marius, the worthy Maestro Gismondo Pulei.

The next day M. Favoral seemed to have resigned himself to the failure of his projects; and, the following Saturday, he told as a pleasant joke, how Mlle. Gilberte had carried the day, and had managed to dismiss her lover.

But a close observer could discover in him symptoms of devouring cares. Deep wrinkles showed along his temples; his eyes were sunken; a continued tension of mind contracted his features. Often during the dinner he would remain motionless for several minutes, his fork aloft; and then he would murmur, “How is it all going to end?”

Sometimes in the morning, before his departure for his office, M. Jottras, of the house of Jottras and Brother, and M. Saint Pavin, the manager of “The Financial Pilot,” came to see him. They closeted themselves together, and remained for hours in conference, speaking so low, that not even a vague murmur could be heard outside the door.

“Your father has grave subjects of anxiety, my children,” said Mme. Favoral: “you may believe me,--me, who for twenty years have been trying to guess our fate upon his countenance.”

But the political events were sufficient to explain any amount of anxiety. It was the second week of July, 1870; and the destinies of France trembled, as upon a cast of the dice, in the hands of a few presumptuous incapables. Was it war with Prussia, or was it peace, that was to issue from the complications of a childishly astute policy?

The most contradictory rumors caused daily at the bourse the most violent oscillations, which endangered the safest fortunes. A few words uttered in a corridor by Emile Ollivier had made a dozen heavy operators rich, but had ruined five hundred small ones. On all hands, credit was trembling.

Until one evening when he came home,

“War is declared,” said M. Favoral.

It was but too true; and no one then had any fears of the result for France. They had so much exalted the French army, they had so often said that it was invincible, that every one among the public expected a series of crushing victories.

Alas! the first telegram announced a defeat. People refused to believe it at first. But there was the evidence. The soldiers had died bravely; but the chiefs had been incapable of leading them.

From that time, and with a vertiginous rapidity, from day to day, from hour to hour, the fatal news came crowding on. Like a river that overflows its banks, Prussia was overrunning France. Bazaine was surrounded at Metz; and the capitulation of Sedan capped the climax of so many disasters.

At last, on the 4th of September, the republic was proclaimed.

On the 5th, when the Signor Gismondo Pulei presented himself at Rue St. Gilles, his face bore such an expression of anguish, that Mlle. Gilberte could not help asking what was the matter.

He rose on that question, and, threatening heaven with his clinched fist,

“Implacable fate does not tire to persecute me,” he replied. “I had overcome all obstacles: I was happy: I was looking forward to a future of fortune and glory. No, the dreadful war must break out.”

For the worthy maestro, this terrible catastrophe was but a new caprice of his own destiny.

“What has happened to you?” inquired the young girl, repressing a smile.

“It happens to me, signora, that I am about to lose my beloved pupil. He leaves me; he forsakes me. In vain have I thrown myself at his feet. My tears have not been able to detain him. He is going to fight; he leaves; he is a soldier!”

Then it was given to Mlle. Gilberte to see clearly within her soul. Then she understood how absolutely she had given herself up, and to what extent she had ceased to belong to herself.

Her sensation was terrible, such as if her whole blood had suddenly escaped through her open arteries. She turned pale, her teeth chattered; and she seemed so near fainting, that the Signor Gismondo sprang to the door, crying, “Help, help! she is dying.”

Mme. Favoral, frightened, came running in. But already, thanks to an all-powerful projection of will, Mlle. Gilberte had recovered, and, smiling a pale smile,

“It’s nothing, mamma,” she said. “A sudden pain in the head; but it’s gone already.”

The worthy maestro was in perfect agony. Taking Mme. Favoral aside,

“It is my fault,” he said. “It is the story of my unheard-of misfortunes that has upset her thus. Monstrous egotist that I am! I should have been careful of her exquisite sensibility.”

She insisted, nevertheless, upon taking her lesson as usual, and recovered enough presence of mind to extract from the Signor Gismondo everything that his much-regretted pupil had confided to him.

That was not much. He knew that his pupil had gone, like anyone else, to Rue de Cherche Midi; that he had signed an engagement; and had been ordered to join a regiment in process of formation near Tours. And, as he went out,

“That is nothing,” said the kind maestro to Mme. Favoral. “The signora has quite recovered, and is as gay as a lark.”

The signora, shut up in her room, was shedding bitter tears. She tried to reason with herself, and could not succeed. Never had the strangeness of her situation so clearly appeared to her. She repeated to herself that she must be mad to have thus become attached to a stranger. She wondered how she could have allowed that love, which was now her very life, to take possession of her soul. But to what end? It no longer rested with her to undo what had been done.

When she thought that Marius de Tregars was about to leave Paris to become a soldier, to fight, to die perhaps, she felt her head whirl; she saw nothing around her but despair and chaos.

And, the more she thought, the more certain she felt that Marius could not have trusted solely to the chance gossip of the Signor Pulei to communicate to her his determination.

“It is perfectly inadmissible,” she thought. “It is impossible that he will not make an effort to see me before going.”

Thoroughly imbued with the idea, she wiped her eyes, took a seat by an open window; and, whilst apparently busy with her work, she concentrated her whole attention upon the street.

There were more people out than usual. The recent events had stirred Paris to its lowest depths, and, as from the crater of a volcano in labor, all the social scoriae rose to the surface. Men of sinister appearance left their haunts, and wandered through the city. The workshops were all deserted; and people strolled at random, stupor or terror painted on their countenance. But in vain did Mlle. Gilberte seek in all this crowd the one she hoped to see. The hours went by, and she was getting discouraged, when suddenly, towards dusk, at the corner of the Rue Turenne,

“‘Tis he,” cried a voice within her.

It was, in fact, M. de Tregars. He was walking towards the Boulevard, slowly, and his eyes raised.

Palpitating, the girl rose to her feet. She was in one of those moments of crisis when the blood, rushing to the brain, smothers all judgment. Unconscious, as it were, of her acts, she leaned over the window, and made a sign to Marius, which he understood very well, and which meant, “Wait, I am coming down.”

“Where are you going, dear?” asked Mme. Favoral, seeing Gilberte putting on her bonnet.

“To the shop, mamma, to get a shade of worsted I need.”

Mlle. Gilberte was not in the habit of going out alone; but it happened quite often that she would go down in the neighborhood on some little errand.

“Do you wish the girl to go out with you?” asked Mme. Favoral.

“Oh, it isn’t worth while!”

She ran down the stairs; and once out, regardless of the looks that might be watching her, she walked straight to M. de Tregars, who was waiting on the corner of the Rue des Minimes.

“You are going away?” she said, too much agitated to notice his own emotion, which was, however, quite evident.

“I must,” he answered.

“Oh!”

“When France is invaded, the place for a man who bears my name is where the fighting is.”

“But there will be fighting in Paris too.”

“Paris has four times as many defenders as it needs. It is outside that soldiers will be wanted.”

They walked slowly, as they spoke thus, along the Rue des Minimes, one of the least frequented in Paris; and there were only to be seen at this hour five or six soldiers talking in front of the barracks gate.

“Suppose I were to beg you not to go,” resumed Mlle. Gilberte. “Suppose I beseeched you, Marius!”

“I should remain then,” he answered in a troubled voice; “but I would be betraying my duty, and failing to my honor; and remorse would weigh upon our whole life. Command now, and I will obey.”

They had stopped; and no one seeing them standing there side by side affectionate and familiar could have believed that they were speaking to each other for the first time. They themselves did not notice it, so much had they come, with the help of all-powerful imagination, and in spite of separation, to the understanding of intimacy. After a moment of painful reflection,

“I do not ask you any longer to stay,” uttered the young girl. He took her hand, and raised it to his lips.

“I expected no less of your courage,” he said, his voice vibrating with love. But he controlled himself, and, in a more quiet tone,

“Thanks to the indiscretion of Pulei,” he added, “I was in hopes of seeing you, but not to have the happiness of speaking to you. I had written--”

He drew from his pocket a large envelope, and, handing it to Mlle. Gilberte,

“Here is the letter,” he continued, “which I intended for you. It contains another, which I beg you to preserve carefully, and not to open unless I do not return. I leave you in Paris a devoted friend, the Count de Villegre. Whatever may happen to you, apply to him with all confidence, as you would to myself.”

Mlle. Gilberte, staggering, leaned against the wall.

“When do you expect to leave?” she inquired.

“This very night. Communications may be cut off at any moment.”

Admirable in her sorrow, but also full of energy, the poor girl looked up, and held out her hand to him.

“Go then,” she said, “O my only friend! go, since honor commands. But do not forget that it is not your life alone that you are going to risk.”

And, fearing to burst into sobs, she fled, and reached the Rue St. Gilles a few moments before her father, who had gone out in quest of news.

Those he brought home were of the most sinister kind.

Like the rising tide, the Prussians spread and advanced, slowly, but steadily. Their marches were numbered; and the day and hour could be named when their flood would come and strike the walls of Paris.

And so, at all the railroad stations, there was a prodigious rush of people who wished to leave at any cost, in any way, in the baggage-car if needs be, and who certainly were not, like Marius, rushing to meet the enemy.

One after another, M. Favoral had seen nearly every one he knew take flight.

The Baron and Baroness de Thaller and their daughter had gone to Switzerland; M. Costeclar was traveling in Belgium; the elder Jottras was in England, buying guns and cartridge; and if the younger Jottras, with M. Saint Pavin of “The Financial Pilot,”
remained in Paris, it was because, through the gallant influence of a lady whose name was not mentioned, they had obtained some valuable contracts from the government.

The perplexities of the cashier of the Mutual Credit were great. The day that the Baron and the Baroness de Thaller had left,

“Pack up our trunks,” he ordered his wife. “The bourse is going to close; and the Mutual Credit can very well get along without me.”

But the next day he became undecided again. What Mlle. Gilberte thought she could guess, was, that he was dying to start alone, and leave his family, but dared not do it. He hesitated so long, that at last, one evening,

“You may unpack the trunks,” he said to his wife. “Paris is invested; and no one can now leave.”

XVIII

In fact, the news had just come, that the Western Railroad, the last one that had remained open, was now cut off.

Paris was invested; and so rapid had been the investment, that it could hardly be believed.

People went in crowds on all the culminating points, the hills of Montmartre, and the heights of the Trocadero. Telescopes had been erected there; and every one was anxious to scan the horizon, and look for the Prussians.

But nothing could be discovered. The distant fields retained their quiet and smiling aspect under the mild rays of the autumn sun.

So that it really required quite an effort of imagination to realize the sinister fact, to understand that Paris, with its two millions of inhabitants, was indeed cut off from the world and separated from the rest of France, by an insurmountable circle of steel.

Doubt, and something like a vague hope, could be traced in the tone of the people who met on the streets, saying,

“Well, it’s all over: we can’t leave any more. Letters, even, cannot pass. No more news, eh?”

But the next day, which was the 19th of September, the most incredulous were convinced.

For the first time Paris shuddered at the hoarse voice of the cannon, thundering on the heights of Chatillon. The siege of Paris, that siege without example in history, had commenced.

The life of the Favorals during these interminable days of anguish and suffering, was that of a hundred thousand other families.

Incorporated in the battalion of his ward, the cashier of the Mutual Credit went off two or three times a week, as well as all his neighbors, to mount guard on the ramparts,--a useless service perhaps, but which those that performed it did not look upon as such, --a very arduous service, at any rate, for poor merchants, accustomed to the comforts of their shops, or the quiet of their offices.

To be sure, there was nothing heroic in tramping through the mud, in receiving the rain or the snow upon the back, in sleeping on the ground or on dirty straw, in remaining on guard with the thermometer twenty degrees below the freezing-point. But people die of pleurisy quite as certainly as of a Prussian bullet; and many died of it.

Maxence showed himself but rarely at Rue St. Gilles: enlisted in a battalion of sharpshooters, he did duty at the advanced posts. And, as to Mme. Favoral and Mlle. Gilberte, they spent the day trying to get something to live on. Rising before daylight, through rain or snow, they took their stand before the butcher’s stall, and, after waiting for hours, received a small slice of horse-meat.

Alone in the evening, by the side of the hearth where a few pieces of green wood smoked without burning, they started at each of the distant reports of the cannon. At each detonation that shook the window-panes, Mme. Favoral thought that it was, perhaps, the one that had killed her son.

And Mlle. Gilberte was thinking of Marius de Tregars. The accursed days of November and December had come. There were constant rumors of bloody battles around Orleans. She imagined Marius, mortally wounded, expiring on the snow, alone, without help, and without a friend to receive his supreme will and his last breath.

One evening the vision was so clear, and the impression so strong, that she started up with a loud cry.

“What is it?” asked Mme. Favoral, alarmed. “What is the matter?”

With a little perspicacity, the worthy woman could easily have obtained her daughter’s secret; for Mlle. Gilberte was not in condition to deny anything. But she contented herself with an explanation which meant nothing, and had not a suspicion, when the girl answered with a forced smile,

“It’s nothing, dear mother, nothing but an absurd idea that crossed my mind.”

Strange to say, never had the cashier of the Mutual Credit been for his family what he was during these months of trials.

During the first weeks of the siege he had been anxious, agitated, nervous; he wandered through the house like a soul in trouble; he had moments of inconceivable prostration, during which tears could be seen rolling down upon his cheeks, and then fits of anger without motive.

But each day that elapsed had seemed to bring calm to his soul. Little by little, he had become to his wife so indulgent and so affectionate, that the poor helot felt her heart touched. He had for his daughter attentions which caused her to wonder.

Often, when the weather was fine, he took them out walking, leading them along the quays towards a part of the walls occupied by the battalion of their ward. Twice he took them to St. Onen, where the sharp-shooters were encamped to which Maxence belonged.

Another day he wished to take them to visit M. de Thaller’s house, of which he had charge. They refused, and instead of getting angry, as he certainly would have done formerly, he commenced describing to them the splendors of the apartments, the magnificent furniture, the carpets and the hangings, the paintings by the great masters, the objects of arts, the bronzes, in a word, all that dazzling luxury of which financiers make use, somewhat as hunters do of the mirror with which larks are caught.

Of business, nothing was ever said.

He went every morning as far as the office of the Mutual Credit; but, as he said, it was solely as a matter of form. Once in a long while, M. Saint Pavin and the younger Jottras paid a visit to the Rue St. Gilles. They had suspended,--the one the payments of his banking house; the other, the publication of “The Financial Pilot.”

But they were not idle for all that; and, in the midst of the public distress, they still managed to speculate upon something, no one knew what, and to realize profits.

They rallied pleasantly the fools who had faith in the defence, and imitated in the most laughable manner the appearance, under their soldier’s coat, of three or four of their friends who had joined the marching battalions. They boasted that they had no privations to endure, and always knew where to find the fresh butter wherewith to dress the large slices of beef which they possessed the art of finding. Mme. Favoral heard them laugh; and M. Saint Pavin, the manager of “The Financial Pilot,” exclaimed,

“Come, come! we would be fools to complain. It is a general liquidation, without risks and without costs.” Their mirth had something revolting in it; for it was now the last and most acute period of the siege.

At the beginning, the greatest optimists hardly thought that Paris could hold out longer than six weeks. And now the investment had lasted over four months. The population was reduced to nameless articles of food. The supply of bread had failed; the wounded, for lack of a little soup, died in the ambulances; old people and children perished by the hundred; on the left bank the shells came down thick and fast, the weather was intensely cold, and there was no more fuel.

And yet no one complained. From the midst of that population of two millions of inhabitants, not one voice rose to beg for their comfort, their health, their life even, at the cost of a capitulation.

Clear-sighted men had never hoped that Paris alone could compel the raising of the siege; but they thought, that by holding out, and keeping the Prussians under its walls, Paris would give to France time to rise, to organize armies, and to rush upon the enemy. There was the duty of Paris; and Paris was toiling to fulfil it to the utmost limits of possibility, reckoning as a victory each day that it gained.

Unfortunately, all this suffering was to be in vain. The fatal hour struck, when, supplies being exhausted, it became necessary to surrender. During three days the Prussians camped in the Champs Elysees, gazing with longing eyes upon that city, object of their most eager desires,--that Paris within which, victorious though they were, they had not dared to venture. Then, soon after, communications were reopened; and one morning, as he received a letter from Switzerland,

“It is from the Baron de Thaller!” exclaimed M. Favoral.

Exactly so. The manager of the Mutual Credit was a prudent man. Pleasantly situated in Switzerland, he was in nowise anxious to return to Paris before being quite certain that he had no risks to run.

Upon receiving M. Favoral’s assurances to that effect, he started; and, almost at the same time the elder Jottras and M. Costeclar made their appearance.

XIX

It was a curious spectacle, the return of those braves for whom Parisian slang had invented the new and significant expression of _franc-fileur_.

They were not so proud then as they have been since. Feeling rather embarrassed in the midst of a population still quivering with the emotions of the siege, they had at least the good taste to try and find pretexts for their absence.

“I was cut off,” affirmed the Baron de Thaller. “I had gone to Switzerland to place my wife and daughter in safety. When I came back, good-by! the Prussians had closed the doors. For more than a week, I wandered around Paris, trying to find an opening. I became suspected of being a spy. I was arrested. A little more, and I was shot dead!”

“As to myself,” declared M. Costeclar, “I foresaw exactly what has happened. I knew that it was outside, to organize armies of relief, that men would be wanted. I went to offer my services to the government of defence; and everybody in Bordeaux saw me booted and spurred, and ready to leave.”

He was consequently soliciting the Cross of the Legion of Honor, and was not without hopes of obtaining it through the all-powerful influence of his financial connections.

“Didn’t So-and-so get it?” he replied to objections. And he named this or that individual whose feats of arms consisted principally in having exhibited themselves in uniforms covered with gold lace to the very shoulders.

“But I am the man who deserves it most, that cross,” insisted the younger M. Jottras; “for I, at least, have rendered valuable services.”

And he went on telling how, after searching for arms all over England, he had sailed for New York, where he had purchased any number of guns and cartridges, and even some batteries of artillery.

This last journey had been very wearisome to him, he added and yet he did not regret it; for it had furnished him an opportunity to study on the spot the financial morals of America; and he had returned with ideas enough to make the fortune of three or four stock companies with twenty millions of capital.

“Ah, those Americans!” he exclaimed. “They are the men who understand business! We are but children by the side of them.”

It was through M. Chapelain, the Desclavettes, and old Desormeaux, that these news reached the Rue St. Gilles.

It was also through Maxence, whose battalion had been dissolved, and who, whilst waiting for something better, had accepted a clerkship in the office of the Orleans Railway, where he earned two hundred francs a month. For M. Favoral saw and heard nothing that was going on around him. He was wholly absorbed in his business: he left earlier, came home later, and hardly allowed himself time to eat and drink.

He told all his friends that business was looking up again in the most unexpected manner; that there were fortunes to be made by those who could command ready cash; and that it was necessary to make up for lost time.

He pretended that the enormous indemnity to be paid to the Prussians would necessitate an enormous movement of capital, financial combinations, a loan, and that so many millions could not be handled without allowing a few little millions to fall into intelligent pockets.

Dazzled by the mere enumeration of those fabulous sums, “I should not be a bit surprised,” said the others, “to see Favoral double and treble his fortune. What a famous match his daughter will be!”

Alas! never had Mlle. Gilberte felt in her heart so much hatred and disgust for that money, the only thought, the sole subject of conversation, of those around her,--for that cursed money which had risen like an insurmountable obstacle between Marius and herself.

For two weeks past, the communications had been completely restored; and there was as yet no sign of M. de Tregars. It was with the most violent palpitations of her heart that she awaited each day the hour of the Signor Gismondo Pulei’s lesson: and more painful each time became her anguish when she heard him exclaim,

“Nothing, not a line, not a word. The pupil has forgotten his old master!”

But Mlle. Gilberte knew well that Marius did not forget. Her blood froze in her veins when she read in the papers the interminable list of those poor soldiers who had succumbed during the invasion, --the more fortunate ones under Prussian bullets; the others along the roads, in the mud or in the snow, of cold, of fatigue, of suffering and of want.

She could not drive from her mind the memory of that lugubrious vision which had so much frightened her; and she was asking herself whether it was not one of those inexplicable presentiments, of which there are examples, which announce the death of a beloved person.

Alone at night in her little room, Mlle. Gilberte withdrew from the hiding-place, where she kept it preciously, that package which Marius had confided to her, recommending her not to open it until she was sure that he would not return. It was very voluminous, enclosed in an envelope of thick paper, sealed with red wax, bearing the arms of Tregars; and she had often wondered what it could possibly contain. And now she shuddered at the thought that she had perhaps the right to open it.

And she had no one of whom she could ask for a word of hope. She was compelled to hide her tears, and to put on a smile. She was compelled to invent pretexts for those who expressed their wonder at seeing her exquisite beauty withering in the bud,--for her mother, whose anxiety was without limit, when she saw her thus pale, her eyes inflamed, and undermined by a continuous fever.

True, Marius, on leaving, had left her a friend, the Count de Villegre; and, if any one knew any thing, he certainly did. But she could see no way of hearing from him without risking her secret. Write to him? Nothing was easier, since she had his address,--Rue Turenne. But where could she ask him to direct his answer? Rue St. Gilles? Impossible! True, she might go to him, or make an appointment in the neighborhood. But how could she escape, even for an hour, without exciting Mme. Favoral’s suspicions?

Sometimes it occurred to her to confide in Maxence, who was laboring with admirable constancy to redeem his past.

But what! must she, then, confess the truth,--confess that she, Gilberte, had lent her ears to the words of a stranger, met by chance in the street, and that she looked forward to no happiness in life save through him? She dared not. She could not take upon herself to overcome the shame of such a situation.

She was on the verge of despair, the day when the Signor Pulei arrived radiant, exclaiming from the very threshold, “I have news!”

And at once, without surprise at the awful emotion of the girl, which he attributed solely to the interest she felt for him,--him Gismondo Pulei, he went on,--“I did not get them direct, but through a respectable signor with long mustaches, and a red ribbon at his buttonhole, who, having received a letter from my dear pupil, has deigned to come to my room, and read it to me.”

The worthy maestro had not forgotten a single word of that letter; and it was almost literally that he repeated it.

Six weeks after having enlisted, his pupil had been promoted corporal, then sergeant, then lieutenant. He had fought in all the battles of the army of the Loire without receiving a scratch. But at the battle of the Maus, whilst leading back his men, who were giving way, he had been shot twice, full in the breast. Carried dying into an ambulance, he had lingered three weeks between life and death, having lost all consciousness of self. Twenty-four hours after, he had recovered his senses; and he took the first opportunity to recall himself to the affection of his friends. All danger was over, he suffered scarcely any more; and they promised him, that, within a month, he would be up, and able to return to Paris.

For the first time in many weeks Mlle. Gilberte breathed freely. But she would have been greatly surprised, had she been told that a day was drawing near when she would bless those wounds which detained Marius upon a hospital cot. And yet it was so.

Mme. Favoral and her daughter were alone, one evening, at the house, when loud clamors arose from the street, in the midst of which could be heard drunken voices yelling the refrains of revolutionary songs, accompanied by continuous rumbling sounds. They ran to the window. The National Guards had just taken possession of the cannon deposited in the Place Royale. The reign of the Commune was commencing.

In less than forty-eight hours, people came to regret the worst days of the siege. Without leaders, without direction, the honest men had lost their heads. All the braves who had returned at the time of the armistice had again taken flight. Soon people had to hide or to fly to avoid being incorporated in the battalions of the Commune. Night and day, around the walls, the fusillade rattled, and the artillery thundered.

Again M. Favoral had given up going to his office. What’s the use? Sometimes, with a singular look, he would say to his wife and children,

“This time it is indeed a liquidation. Paris is lost!”

And indeed they thought so, when at the hour of the supreme struggle, among the detonations of the cannon and the explosion of the shells; they felt their house shaking to its very foundations; when in the midst of the night they saw their apartment as brilliantly lighted as at mid-day by the flames which were consuming the Hotel de Ville and the houses around the Place de la Bastille. And, in fact, the rapid action of the troops alone saved Paris from destruction.

But towards the end of the following week, matters had commenced to quiet down; and Gilberte learned the return of Marius.

XX

“At last it has been given to my eyes to contemplate him, and to my arms to press him against my heart!”

It was in these terms that the old Italian master, all vibrating with enthusiasm, and with his most terrible accent, announced to Mlle. Gilberte that he had just seen that famous pupil from whom he expected both glory and fortune.

“But how weak he is still!” he added, “and suffering from his wounds. I hardly recognized him, he has grown so pale and so thin.”

But the girl was listening to him no more. A flood of life filled her heart. This moment made her forget all her troubles and all her anguish.

“And I too,” thought she, “shall see him again to-day.”

And, with the unerring instinct of the woman who loves, she calculated the moment when Marius would appear in Rue St. Gilles. It would probably be about nightfall, like the first time, before leaving; that is, about eight o’clock, for the days just then were about the longest in the year. Now it so happened, that, on that very day and hour, Mlle. Gilberte expected to be alone at home. It was understood that her mother would, after dinner, call on Mme. Desclavettes, who was in bed, half dead of the fright she had had during the last convulsions of the Commune. She would therefore be free and would not need to invent a pretext to go out for a few moments. She could not help, however, but feel that this was a bold and most venturesome step for her to take; and, when her mother went out, she had not yet fully decided what to do. But her bonnet was within reach, and Marius’ letter was in her pocket. She went to sit at the window. The street was solitary and silent as of old. Night was coming; and heavy black clouds floated over Paris. The heat was overpowering: there was not a breath of air.

One by one, as the hour was approaching when she expected to see Marius, the hesitations of the young girl vanished like smoke. She feared but one thing,--that he would not come, or that he may already have come and left, without succeeding in seeing her.

Already did the objects become less distinct; and the gas was being lit in the back-shops, when she recognized him on the other side of the street. He looked up as he went by; and, without stopping, he addressed her a rapid gesture, which she alone could understand, and which meant, “Come, I beseech you!”

Her heart beating loud enough to be heard, Mlle. Gilberte ran down the stairs. But it was only when she found herself in the street that she could appreciate the magnitude of the risk she was running. Concierges and shopkeepers were all sitting in front of their doors, taking the fresh air. All knew her. Would they not be surprised to see her out alone at such an hour? Twenty steps in front of her she could see Marius. But he had understood the danger; for, instead of turning the corner of the Rue des Minimes, he followed the Rue St. Gilles straight, and only stopped on the other side of the Boulevard.

Then only did Mlle. Gilberte join him; and she could not withhold an exclamation, when she saw that he was as pale as death, and scarcely able to stand and to walk.

“How imprudent of you to have returned so soon!” she said.

A little blood came to M. de Tregars’ cheeks. His face brightened up, and, in a voice quivering with suppressed passion,

“It would have been more imprudent still to stay away,” he uttered. “Far from you, I felt myself dying.”

They were both leaning against the door of a closed shop; and they were as alone in the midst of the throng that circulated on the Boulevards, busy looking at the fearful wrecks of the Commune.

“And besides,” added Marius, “have I, then, a minute to lose? I asked you for three years. Fifteen months have gone, and I am no better off than on the first day. When this accursed war broke out, all my arrangements were made. I was certain to rapidly accumulate a sufficient fortune to enable me to ask for your hand without being refused. Whereas now--”

“Well?”

“Now every thing is changed. The future is so uncertain, that no one wishes to venture their capital. Marcolet himself, who certainly does not lack boldness, and who believes firmly in the success of our enterprise, was telling me yesterday, ‘There is nothing to be done just now: we must wait.’”

There was in his voice such an intensity of grief, that the girl felt the tears coming to her eyes.

“We will wait then,” she said, attempting to smile.

But M. de Tregars shook his head.

“Is it possible?” he said. “Do you, then, think that I do not know what a life you lead?”

Mlle. Gilberte looked up.

“Have I ever complained?” she asked proudly.

“No. Your mother and yourself, you have always religiously kept the secret of your tortures; and it was only a providential accident that revealed them to me. But I learned every thing at last. I know that she whom I love exclusively and with all the power of my soul is subjected to the most odious despotism, insulted, and condemned to the most humiliating privations. And I, who would give my life for her a thousand times over,--I can do nothing for her. Money raises between us such an insuperable obstacle, that my love is actually an offence. To hear from her, I am driven to accept accomplices. If I obtain from her a few moments of conversation, I run the risk of compromising her maidenly reputation.”

Deeply affected by his emotion:

“At least,” said Mlle. Gilberte, “you succeeded in delivering me from M. Costeclar.”

“Yes, I was fortunately able to find weapons against that scoundrel. But can I find some against all others that may offer? Your father is very rich; and the men are numerous for whom marriage is but a speculation like any other.”

“Would you doubt me?”

“Ah, rather would I doubt myself! But I know what cruel trials your refusal to marry M. Costeclar imposed upon you: I know what a merciless struggle you had to sustain. Another pretender may come, and then--No, no, you see that we cannot wait.”

“What would you do?”

“I know not. I have not yet decided upon my future course. And yet Heaven knows what have been the labors of my mind during that long month I have just spent upon an ambulance-bed, that month during which you were my only thought. Ah! when I think of it, I cannot find words to curse the recklessness with which I disposed of my fortune.”

As if she had heard a blasphemy, the young girl drew back a step.

“It is impossible,” she exclaimed, “that you should regret having paid what your father owed.”

A bitter smile contracted M. de Tregars’ lips.

“And suppose I were to tell you,” he replied, “that my father in reality owed nothing?”

“Oh!”

“Suppose I told you they took from him his entire fortune, over two millions, as audaciously as a pick-pocket robs a man of his handkerchief? Suppose I told you, that, in his loyal simplicity, he was but a man of straw in the hands of skillful knaves? Have you forgotten what you once heard the Count de Villegre say?”

Mlle. Gilberte had forgotten nothing.

“The Count de Villegre,” she replied, “pretended that it was time enough still to compel the men who had robbed your father to disgorge.”

“Exactly!” exclaimed Marius. “And now I am determined to make them disgorge.”

In the mean time night had quite come. Lights appeared in the shop-windows; and along the line of the Boulevard the gas-lamps were being lit. Alarmed by this sudden illumination, M. de Tregars drew off Mlle. Gilberte to a more obscure spot, by the stairs that lead to the Rue Amelot; and there, leaning against the iron railing, he went on,

“Already, at the time of my father’s death, I suspected the abominable tricks of which he was the victim. I thought it unworthy of me to verify my suspicions. I was alone in the world: my wants were few. I was fully convinced that my researches would give me, within a brief time, a much larger fortune than the one I gave up. I found something noble and grand, and which flattered my vanity, in thus abandoning every thing, without discussion, without litigation, and consummating my ruin with a single dash of my pen. Among my friends the Count de Villegre alone had the courage to tell me that this was a guilty piece of folly; that the silence of the dupes is the strength of the knaves; that my indifference, which made the rascals rich, would make them laugh too. I replied that I did not wish to see the name of Tregars dragged into court in a scandalous law-suit, and that to preserve a dignified silence was to honor my father’s memory. Treble fool that I was! The only way to honor my father’s memory was to avenge him, to wrest his spoils from the scoundrels who had caused his death. I see it clearly to-day. But, before undertaking any thing, I wished to consult you.”

Mlle. Gilberte was listening with the most intense attention. She had come to mingle so completely in her thoughts her future life and that of M. de Tregars, that she saw nothing unusual in the fact of his consulting her upon matters affecting their prospects, and of seeing herself standing there deliberating with him.

“You will require proofs,” she suggested.

“I have none, unfortunately,” replied M. de Tregars; “at least, none sufficiently positive, and such as are required by courts of justice. But I think I may find them. My former suspicions have become a certainty. The same good luck that enabled me to deliver you of M. Costeclar’s persecutions, also placed in my hands the most valuable information.”

“Then you must act,” uttered Mlle. Gilberte resolutely.

Marius hesitated for a moment, as if seeking expression to convey what he had still to say. Then,

“It is my duty,” he proceeded, “to conceal nothing from you. The task is a heavy one. The obscure schemers of ten years ago have become big financiers, intrenched behind their money-bags as behind an impregnable fort. Formerly isolated, they have managed to gather around them powerful interests, accomplices high in office, and friends whose commanding situation protects them. Having succeeded, they are absolved. They have in their favor what is called public consideration,--that idiotic thing which is made up of the admiration of the fools, the approbation of the knaves, and the concert of all interested vanities. When they pass, their horses at full trot, their carriage raising a cloud of dust, insolent, impudent, swelled with the vulgar fatuity of wealth, people bow to the ground, and say, ‘Those are smart fellows!’ And in fact, yes, by skill or luck, they have hitherto avoided the police-courts where so many others have come to grief. Those who despise them fear them, and shake hands with them. Moreover, they are rich enough not to steal any more themselves. They have employes to do that. I take Heaven to witness that never until lately had the idea come to me to disturb in their possession the men who robbed my father. Alone, what need had I of money? Later, O my friend! I thought I could succeed in conquering the fortune I needed to obtain your hand. You had promised to wait; and I was happy to think that I should owe you to my sole exertions. Events have crushed my hopes. I am to-day compelled to acknowledge that all my efforts would be in vain. To wait would be to run the risk of losing you. Therefore I hesitate no longer. I want what’s mine: I wish to recover that of which I have been robbed. Whatever I may do,--for, alas! I know not to what I may be driven, what role I may have to play,--remember that of all my acts, of all my thoughts, there will not be a single one that does not aim to bring nearer the blessed day when you shall become my wife.”

There was in his voice so much unspeakable affection, that the young girl could hardly restrain her tears.

“Never, whatever may happen, shall I doubt you, Marius,” she uttered.

He took her hands, and, pressing them passionately within his,

“And I,” he exclaimed, “I swear, that, sustained by the thought of you, there is no disgust that I will not overcome, no obstacle that I will not overthrow.”

He spoke so loud, that two or three persons stopped. He noticed it, and was brought suddenly from sentiment to the reality,

“Wretches that we are,” he said in a low voice, and very fast, “we forget what this interview may cost us!”

And he led Mlle. Gilberte across the Boulevard; and, whilst making their way to the Rue St. Gilles, through the deserted streets,

“It is a dreadful imprudence we have just committed,” resumed M. de Tregars. “But it was indispensable that we should see each other; and we had not the choice of means. Now, and for a long time, we shall be separated. Every thing you wish me to know,--say it to that worthy Gismondo, who repeats faithfully to me every word you utter. Through him, also, you shall hear from me. Twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, about nightfall, I shall pass by your house; and, if I am lucky enough to have a glimpse of you, I shall return home