Other People's Money 37 – Gaboriau · Verses Across
Literature · Detective Fiction
Other People's Money 37Part 2 · Chapter 7
18
Literature · Detective Fiction
Other People's Money 37
Part 2 · Chapter 7
GaboriauEnglish
“Cesarine!” Mme. de Thaller called, in a voice which sounded at once like a prayer and a threat.
“I am going to dress myself, mamma,” she answered.
“Come back!”
“So that you can scold me if I am not ready when you want to go? Thank you, no.”
“I command you to come back, Cesarine.”
No answer. She was far already.
Mme. de Thaller closed the door of the little parlor, and returning to take a seat by M. de Tregars,
“What a singular girl!” she said.
Meantime he was watching in the glass what was going on in the other room. The suspicious-looking man was there still, and alone. A servant had brought him pen, ink and paper; and he was writing rapidly.
“How is it that they leave him there alone?” wondered Marius.
And he endeavored to find upon the features of the baroness an answer to the confused presentiments which agitated his brain. But there was no longer any trace of the emotion which she had manifested when taken unawares. Having had time for reflection, she had composed for herself an impenetrable countenance. Somewhat surprised at M. de Tregars’ silence,
“I was saying,” she repeated, “that Cesarine is a strange girl.”
Still absorbed by the scene in the grand parlor,
“Strange, indeed!” he answered.
“And such is,” said the baroness with a sigh, “the result of M. de Thaller’s weakness, and above all of my own.
“We have no child but Cesarine; and it was natural that we should spoil her. Her fancy has been, and is still, our only law. She has never had time to express a wish: she is obeyed before she has spoken.”
She sighed again, and deeper than the first time. “You have just seen,” she went on, “the results of that insane education. And yet it would not do to trust appearances. Cesarine, believe me, is not as extravagant as she seems. She possesses solid qualities,--of those which a man expects of the woman who is to be his wife.”
Without taking his eyes off the glass,
“I believe you madame,” said M. de Tregars.
“With her father, with me especially, she is capricious, wilful, and violent; but, in the hands of the husband of her choice, she would be like wax in the hands of the modeler.”
The man in the parlor had finished his letter, and, with an equivocal smile, was reading it over.
“Believe me, madame,” replied M. de Tregars, “I have perfectly understood how much naive boasting there was in all that Mlle. Cesarine told me.”
“Then, really, you do not judge her too severely?”
“Your heart has not more indulgence for her than my own.”
“And yet it is from you that her first real sorrow comes.”
“From me?”
The baroness shook her head in a melancholy way, to convey an idea of her maternal affection and anxiety.
“Yes, from you, my dear marquis,” she replied, “from you alone. On the very day you entered this house, Cesarine’s whole nature changed.”
Having read his letter over, the man in the grand parlor had folded it, and slipped it into his pocket, and, having left his seat, seemed to be waiting for something. M. de Tregars was following, in the glass, his every motion, with the most eager curiosity. And nevertheless, as he felt the absolute necessity of saying something, were it only to avoid attracting the attention of the baroness,
“What!” he said, “Mlle. Cesarine’s nature did change, then?”
“In one night. Had she not met the hero of whom every girl dreams? --a man of thirty, bearing one of the oldest names in France.”
She stopped, expecting an answer, a word, an exclamation. But, as M. de Tregars said nothing,
“Did you never notice any thing then?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“And suppose I were to tell you myself, that my poor Cesarine, alas! --loves you?”
M. de Tregars started. Had he been less occupied with the personage in the grand parlor, he would certainly not have allowed the conversation to drift in this channel. He understood his mistake; and, in an icy tone,
“Permit me, madame,” he said, “to believe that you are jesting.”
“And suppose it were the truth.”
“It would make me unhappy in the extreme.”
“Sir!”
“For the reason which I have already told you, that I love Mlle. Gilberte Favoral with the deepest and the purest love, and that for the past three years she has been, before God, my affianced bride.”
Something like a flash of anger passed over Mme. de Thaller’s eyes.
“And I,” she exclaimed,--“I tell you that this marriage is senseless.”
“I wish it were still more so, that I might the better show to Gilberte how dear she is to me.”
Calm in appearance, the baroness was scratching with her nails the satin of the chair on which she was sitting.
“Then,” she went on, “your resolution is settled.”
“Irrevocably.”
“Still, now, come, between us who are no longer children, suppose M. de Thaller were to double Cesarine’s dowry, to treble it?”
An expression of intense disgust contracted the manly features of Marius de Tregars.
“Ah! not another word, madame,” he interrupted.
There was no hope left. Mme. de Thaller fully realized it by the tone in which he spoke. She remained pensive for over a minute, and suddenly, like a person who has finally made up her mind, she rang.
A footman appeared.
“Do what I told you!” she ordered.
And as soon as the footman had gone, turning to M. de Tregars,
“Alas!” she said, “who would have thought that I would curse the day when you first entered our house?”
But, whilst, she spoke, M. de Tregars noticed in the glass the result of the order she had just given.
The footman walked into the grand parlor, spoke a few words; and at once the man with the alarming countenance put on his hat and went out.
“This is very strange!” thought M. de Tregars. Meantime, the baroness was going on,
“If your intentions are to that point irrevocable, how is it that you are here? You have too much experience of the world not to have understood, this morning, the object of my visit and of my allusions.”
Fortunately, M. de Tregars’ attention was no longer drawn by the proceedings in the next room. The decisive moment had come: the success of the game he was playing would, perhaps, depend upon his coolness and self-command.
“It is because I did understand, madame, and even better than you suppose, that I am here.”
“Indeed!”
“I came, expecting to deal with M. de Thaller alone. I have been compelled, by what has happened, to alter my intentions. It is to you that I must speak first.”
Mme. de Thaller continued to manifest the same tranquil assurance; but she stood up. Feeling the approach of the storm, she wished to be up, and ready to meet it.
“You honor me,” she said with an ironical smile.
There was, henceforth, no human power capable of turning Marius de Tregars from the object he had in view.
“It is to you I shall speak,” he repeated, “because, after you have heard me, you may perhaps judge that it is your interest to join me in endeavoring to obtain from your husband what I ask, what I demand, what I must have.”
With an air of surprise marvelously well simulated, if it was not real, the baroness was looking at him.
“My father,” he proceeded to say, “the Marquis de Tregars, was once rich: he had several millions. And yet when I had the misfortune of losing him, three years ago, he was so thoroughly ruined, that to relieve the scruples of his honor, and to make his death easier, I gave up to his creditors all I had in the world. What had become of my father’s fortune? What filter had been administered to him to induce him to launch into hazardous speculations,--he an old Breton gentleman, full, even to absurdity, of the most obstinate prejudices of the nobility? That’s what I wished to ascertain.
“And now, madame, I--have ascertained.”
She was a strong-minded woman, the Baroness de Thaller. She had had so many adventures in her life, she had walked on the very edge of so many precipices, concealed so many anxieties, that danger was, as it were, her element, and that, at the decisive moment of an almost desperate game, she could remain smiling like those old gamblers whose face never betrays their terrible emotion at the moment when they risk their last stake. Not a muscle of her face moved; and it was with the most imperturbable calm that she said,
“Go on, I am listening: it must be quite interesting.”
That was not the way to propitiate M. de Tregars.
He resumed, in a brief and harsh tone,
“When my father died, I was young. I did not know then what I have learned since,--that to contribute to insure the impunity of knaves is almost to make one’s self their accomplice. And the victim who says nothing and submits, does contribute to it. The honest man, on the contrary, should speak, and point out to others the trap into which he has fallen, that they may avoid it.”
The baroness was listening with the air of a person who is compelled by politeness to hear a tiresome story.
“That is a rather gloomy preamble,” she said. M. de Tregars took no notice of the interruption.
“At all times,” he went on, “my father seemed careless of his affairs: that affectation, he thought, was due to the name he bore. But his negligence was only apparent. I might mention things of him that would do honor to the most methodical tradesman. He had, for instance, the habit of preserving all the letters of any importance which he received. He left twelve or fifteen boxes full of such. They were carefully classified; and many bore upon their margin a few notes indicating what answer had been made to them.”
Half suppressing a yawn,
“That is order,” said the baroness, “if I know any thing about it.”
“At the first moment, determined not to stir up the past, I attached no importance to those letters; and they would certainly have been burnt, but for an old friend of the family, the Count de Villegre, who had them carried to his own house. But later, acting under the influence of circumstances which it would be too long to explain to you, I regretted my apathy; and I thought that I should, perhaps, find in that correspondence something to either dissipate or justify certain suspicions which had occurred to me.”
“So that, like a respectful son, you read it?” M. de Tregars bowed ceremoniously.
“I believe,” he said, “that to avenge a father of the imposture of which he was the victim during his life, is to render homage to his memory. Yes, madame, I read the whole of that correspondence, and with an interest which you will readily understand. I had already, and without result, examined the contents of several boxes, when in the package marked 1852, a year which my father spent in Paris, certain letters attracted my attention. They were written upon coarse paper, in a very primitive handwriting and wretchedly spelt. They were signed sometimes Phrasie, sometimes Marquise de Javelle. Some gave the address, ‘Rue des Bergers, No. 3, Paris-Grenelle.’
“Those letters left me no doubt upon what had taken place. My father had met a young working-girl of rare beauty: he had taken a fancy to her; and, as he was tormented by the fear of being loved for his money alone, he had passed himself off for a poor clerk in one of the departments.”
“Quite a touching little love-romance,” remarked the baroness.
But there was no impertinence that could affect Marius de Tregars’ coolness.
“A romance, perhaps,” he said, “but in that case a money-romance, not a love-romance. This Phrasie or Marquise de Javelle, announces in one of her letters, that in February, 1853, she has given birth to a daughter, whom she has confided to some relatives of hers in the south, near Toulouse. It was doubtless that event which induced my father to acknowledge who he was. He confesses that he is not a poor clerk, but the Marquis de Tregars, having an income of over a hundred thousand francs. At once the tone of the correspondence changes. The Marquise de Javelle has a stupid time where she lives; the neighbors reproach her with her fault; work spoils her pretty hands. Result: less than two weeks after the birth of her daughter, my father hires for his pretty mistress a lovely apartment, which she occupies under the name of Mme. Devil; she is allowed fifteen hundred francs a month, servants, horses, carriage.”
Mme. de Thaller was giving signs of the utmost impatience. Without paying any attention to them, M. de Tregars proceeded,
“Henceforth free to see each other daily, my father and his mistress cease to write. But Mme. Devil does not waste her time. During a space of less than eight months, from February to September, she induces my father to dispose--not in her favor, she is too disinterested for that, but in favor of her daughter--of a sum exceeding five hundred thousand francs. In September, the correspondence is resumed. Mme. Devil discovers that she is not happy, and acknowledges it in a letter, which shows, by its improved writing and more correct spelling, that she has been taking lessons.
“She complains of her precarious situation: the future frightens her: she longs for respectability. Such is, for three months, the constant burden of her correspondence. She regrets the time when she was a working girl: why has she been so weak? Then, at last, in a note which betrays long debates and stormy discussions, she announces that she has an unexpected offer of marriage; a fine fellow, who, if she only had two hundred thousand francs, would give his name to herself and to her darling little daughter. For a long time my father hesitates; but she presses her point with such rare skill, she demonstrates so conclusively that this marriage will insure the happiness of their child, that my father yields at last, and resigns himself to the sacrifice. And in a memorandum on the margin of a last letter, he states that he has just given two hundred thousand francs to Mme. Devil; that he will never see her again; and that he returns to live in Brittany, where he wishes, by the most rigid economy, to repair the breach he has just made in his fortune.”
“Thus end all these love-stories,” said Mme. de Thaller in a jesting tone.
“I beg your pardon: this one is not ended yet. For many years, my father kept his word, and never left our homestead of Tregars. But at last he grew tired of his solitude, and returned to Paris. Did he seek to see his former mistress again? I think not. I suppose that chance brought them together; or else, that, being aware of his return, she managed to put herself in his way. He found her more fascinating than ever, and, according to what she wrote him, rich and respected; for her husband had become a personage. She would have been perfectly happy, she added, had it been possible for her to forget the man whom she had once loved so much, and to whom she owed her position.
“I have that letter. The elegant hand, the style, and the correct orthography, express better than any thing else the transformations of the Marquise de Javelle. Only it is not signed. The little working-girl has become prudent: she has much to lose, and fears to compromise herself.
“A week later, in a laconic note, apparently dictated by an irresistible passion, she begs my father to come to see her at her own house. He does so, and finds there a little girl, whom he believes to be his own child, and whom he at once begins to idolize.
“And that’s all. Again he falls under the charm. He ceases to belong to himself: his former mistress can dispose, at her pleasure, of his fortune and of his fate.
“But see now what bad luck! The husband takes a notion to become jealous of my father’s visits. In a letter which is a masterpiece of diplomacy, the lady explains her anxiety.
“‘He has suspicions,’ she writes; ‘and to what extremities might he not resort, were he to discover the truth!’ And with infinite art she insinuates that the best way to justify his constant presence is to associate himself with that jealous husband.
“It is with childish haste that my father jumps at the suggestion. But money is needed. He sells his lands, and everywhere announces that he has great financial ideas, and that he is going to increase his fortune tenfold.
“There he is now, partner of his former mistress’s husband, engaged in speculations, director of a company. He thinks that he is doing an excellent business: he is convinced that he is making lots of money. Poor honest man! They prove to him, one morning, that he is ruined, and, what is more, compromised. And this is made to look so much like the truth, that I interfere myself, and pay the creditors. We were ruined; but honor was safe. A few weeks later, my father died broken-hearted.”
Mme. de Thaller half rose from her seat with a gesture which indicated the joy of escaping at last a merciless bore. A glance from M. de Tregars riveted her to her seat, freezing upon her lips the jest she was about to utter.
“I have not done yet,” he said rudely.
And, without suffering any interruption,
“From this correspondence,” he resumed, “resulted the flagrant, irrefutable proof of a shameful intrigue, long since suspected by my old friend, General Count de Villegre. It became evident to me that my poor father had been most shamefully imposed upon by that mistress, so handsome and so dearly loved, and, later, despoiled by the husband of that mistress. But all this availed me nothing. Being ignorant of my father’s life and connections, the letters giving neither a name nor a precise detail, I knew not whom to accuse. Besides, in order to accuse, it is necessary to have, at least, some material proof.”
The baroness had resumed her seat; and every thing about her--her attitude, her gestures, the motion of her lips--seemed to say,
“You are my guest. Civility has its demands; but really you abuse your privileges.”
M. de Tregars went on,
“At this moment I was still a sort of savage, wholly absorbed in my experiments, and scarcely ever setting foot outside my laboratory. I was indignant; I ardently wished to find and to punish the villains who had robbed us: but I knew not how to go about it, nor in what direction to seek information. The wretches would, perhaps, have gone unpunished, but for a good and worthy man, now a commissary of police, to whom I once rendered a slight service, one night, in a riot, when he was close pressed by some half-dozen rascals. I explained the situation to him: he took much interest in it, promised his assistance, and marked out my line of conduct.”
Mme. de Thaller seemed restless upon her seat.
“I must confess,” she began, “that I am not wholly mistress of my time. I am dressed, as you see: I have to go out.”
If she had preserved any hope of adjourning the explanation which she felt coming, she must have lost it when she heard the tone in which M. de Tregars interrupted her.
“You can go out to-morrow.”
And, without hurrying,
“Advised, as I have just told you,” he continued, “and assisted by the experience of a professional man, I went first to No. 3, Rue des Bergers, in Grenelle. I found there some old people, the foreman of a neighboring factory and his wife, who had been living in the house for nearly twenty-five years. At my first question, they exchanged a glance, and commenced laughing. They remembered perfectly the Marquise de Javelle, which was but a nickname for a young and pretty laundress, whose real name was Euphrasie Taponnet. She had lived for eighteen months on the same landing as themselves: she had a lover, who passed himself off for a clerk, but who was, in fact, she had told them, a very wealthy nobleman. They added that she had given birth to a little girl, and that, two weeks later she had disappeared, and they had never heard a word from her. When I left them, they said to me, ‘If you see Phrasie, ask her if she ever knew old Chandour and his wife. I am sure she’ll remember us.’”
For the first time Mme. de Thaller shuddered slightly; but it was almost imperceptible.
“From Grenelle,” continued M. de Tregars, “I went to the house where my father’s mistress had lived under the name of Mme. Devil. I was in luck. I found there the same concierge as in 1853. As soon as I mentioned Mme. Devil, she answered me that she had not in the least forgotten her, but, on the contrary, would know her among a thousand. She was, she said, one of the prettiest little women she had ever seen, and the most generous tenant. I understood the hint, handed her a couple of napoleons, and heard from her every thing she knew on the subject. It seemed that this pretty Mme. Devil had, not one lover, but two,--the acknowledged one, who was the master, and footed the bills; and the other an anonymous one, who went out through the back-stairs, and who did not pay, on the contrary. The first was called the Marquis de Tregars: of the second, she had never known but the first name, Frederic. I tried to ascertain what had become of Mme. Devil; but the worthy concierge swore to me that she did not know.
“One morning, like a person who is going abroad, or who wishes to cover up her tracks, Mme. Devil had sent for a furniture-dealer, and a dealer in second-hand clothes, and had sold them every thing she had, going away with nothing but a little leather satchel, in which were her jewels and her money.”
The Baroness de Thaller still kept a good countenance. After examining her for a moment, with a sort of eager curiosity, Marius de Tregars went on,
“When I communicated this information to my friend, the commissary of police, he shook his head. ‘Two years ago,’ he told me, ‘I would have said, that’s more than we want to find those people; for the public records would have given us at once the key of this enigma. But we have had the war and the Commune; and the books of record have been burnt up. Still we must not give up. A last hope remains; and I know the man who is capable of realizing it.’
“Two days after, he brought me an excellent fellow, named Victor Chupin, in whom I could have entire confidence; for he was recommended to me by one of the men whom I like and esteem the most, the Duke de Champdoce. Giving up all idea of applying at the various mayors’ offices, Victor Chupin, with the patience and the tenacity of an Indian following a scent, began beating about the districts of Grenelle, Vargirard, and the Invalids. And not in vain; for, after a week of investigations he brought me a nurse, residing Rue de l’Universite, who remembered perfectly having once attended, on the occasion of her confinement, a remarkably pretty young woman, living in the Rue des Bergers, and nicknamed the Marquise de Javelle. And as she was a very orderly woman, who at all times had kept a very exact account of her receipts, she brought me a little book in which I read this entry: ‘For attending Euphrasie Taponnet, alias the Marquise de Javelle (a girl), one hundred francs.’ And this is not all. This woman informed me, moreover, that she had been requested to present the child at the mayor’s office, and that she had been duly registered there under the names of Euphrasie Cesarine Taponnet, born of Euphrasie Taponnet, laundress, and an unknown father. Finally she placed at my disposal her account-book and her testimony.”
Taxed beyond measure, the energy of the baroness was beginning to fail her; she was turning livid under her rice-powder. Still in the same icy tone,
“You can understand, madame,” said Marius de Tregars, “that this woman’s testimony, together with the letters which are in my possession, enables me to establish before the courts the exact date of the birth of a daughter whom my father had of his mistress. But that’s nothing yet. With renewed zeal, Victor Chupin had resumed his investigations. He had undertaken the examination of the marriage-registers in all the parishes of Paris, and, as early as the following week, he discovered at Notre Dame des Lorettes the entry of the marriage of Euphrasie Taponnet with Frederic de Thaller.”
Though she must have expected that name, the baroness started up violently and livid, and with a haggard look.
“It’s false!” she began in a choking voice.
A smile of ironical pity passed over Marius’ lips.
“Five minutes’ reflection will prove to you that it is useless to deny,” he interrupted. “But wait. In the books of that same church, Victor Chupin has found registered the baptism of a daughter of M. and Mme de Thaller, bearing the same names as the first one, --Euphrasie Cesarine.”
With a convulsive motion the baroness shrugged her shoulder.
“What does all that prove?” she said.
“That proves, madame, the well-settled intention of substituting one child for another; that proves that my father was imprudently deceived when he was made to believe that the second Cesarine was his daughter, the daughter in whose favor he had formerly disposed of over five hundred thousand francs; that proves that there is somewhere in the world a poor girl who has been basely forsaken by her mother, the Marquise de Javelle, now become the Baroness de Thaller.”
Beside herself with terror and anger,
“That is an infamous lie!” exclaimed the baroness. M. de Tregars bowed.
“The evidence of the truth of my statements,” he said, “I shall find at Louveciennes, and at the Hotel des Folies, Boulevard du Temple, Paris.”
Night had come. A footman came in carrying lamps, which he placed upon the mantelpiece. He was not all together one minute in the little parlor; but that one minute was enough to enable the Marquise de Thaller to recover her coolness, and to collect her ideas. When the footman retired, she had made up her mind, with the resolute promptness of a person accustomed to perilous situations. She gave up the discussion, and, drawing near to M. de Tregars,
“Enough allusions,” she said: “let us speak frankly, and face to face now. What do you want?”
But the change was too sudden not to arouse Marius’s suspicions.
“I want a great many things,” he replied.
“Still you must specify.”
“Well, I claim first the five hundred thousand francs which my father had settled upon his daughter,--the daughter whom you cast off.”
“And what next?”
“I want besides, my own and my father’s fortune, of which we have been robbed by M. de Thaller, with your assistance, madame.”
“Is that all, at least?”
M. de Tregars shook his head.
“That’s nothing yet,” he replied.
“Oh!”
“We have now to say something of Vincent Favoral’s affairs.”
An attorney who is defending the interests of a client is neither calmer nor cooler than Mme. de Thaller at this moment.
“Do the affairs of my husband’s cashier concern me, then?” she said with a shade of irony.
“Yes, madame, very much.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
“I know it from excellent sources, because, on my return from Louveciennes, I called in the Rue du Cirque, where I saw one Zelie Cadelle.”
He thought that the baroness would at least start on hearing that name. Not at all. With a look of profound astonishment,
“Rue du Cirque,” she repeated, like a person who is making a prodigious effort of memory,--“Rue du Cirque! Zelie Cadelle! Really, I do not understand.”
But, from the glance which M. de Tregars cast upon her, she must have understood that she would not easily draw from him the particulars which he had resolved not to tell.
“I believe, on the contrary,” he uttered, “that you understand perfectly.”
“Be it so, if you insist upon it. What do you ask for Favoral?”
“I demand, not for Favoral, but for the stockholders who have been impudently defrauded, the twelve millions which are missing from the funds of the Mutual Credit.”
Mme. de Thaller burst out laughing.
“Only that?” she said.
“Yes, only that!”
“Well, then, it seems to me that you should present your reclamations to M. Favoral himself. You have the right to run after him.”
“It is useless, for the reason that it is not he, the poor fool! who has carried off the twelve millions.”
“Who is it, then?”
“M. le Baron de Thaller, no doubt.”
With that accent of pity which one takes to reply to an absurd proposition,--“You are mad, my poor marquis,” said Mme. de Thaller.
“You do not think so.”
“But suppose I should refuse to do any thing more?”
He fixed upon her a glance in which she could read an irrevocable determination; and slowly,
“I have a perfect horror of scandal,” he replied, “and, as you perceive, I am trying to arrange every thing quietly between us. But, if I do not succeed thus, I must appeal to the courts.”
“Where are your proofs?”
“Don’t be afraid: I have proofs to sustain all my allegations.”
The baroness had stretched herself comfortably in her arm-chair.
“May we know them?” she inquired.
Marius was getting somewhat uneasy in presence of Mme. de Thaller’s imperturbable assurance. What hope had she? Could she see some means of escape from a situation apparently so desperate? Determined to prove to her that all was lost, and that she had nothing to do but to surrender,
“Oh! I know, madame,” he replied, “that you have taken your precautions. But, when Providence interferes, you see, human foresight does not amount to much. See, rather, what happens in regard to your first daughter,--the one you had when you were still only Marquise de Javelle.”
And briefly he called to her mind the principal incidents of Mlle. Lucienne’s life from the time that she had left her with the poor gardeners at Louveciennes, without giving either her name or her address,--the injury she had received by being run over by Mme. de Thaller’s carriage; the long letter she had written from the hospital, begging for assistance; her visit to the house, and her meeting with the Baron de Thaller; the effort to induce her to emigrate to America; her arrest by means of false information, and her escape, thanks to the kind peace-officer; the attempt upon her as she was going home late one night; and, finally, her imprisonment after the Commune, among the petroleuses, and her release through the interference of the same honest friend.
And, charging her with the responsibility of all these infamous acts, he paused for an answer or a protest.
And, as Mme. de Thaller said nothing,
“You are looking at me, madame, and wondering how I have discovered all that. A single word will explain it all. The peace-officer who saved your daughter is precisely the same to whom it was once my good fortune to render a service. By comparing notes, we have gradually reached the truth,--reached you, madame. Will you acknowledge now that I have more proofs than are necessary to apply to the courts?”
Whether she acknowledged it or not, she did not condescend to discuss.
“What then?” she said coldly.
But M. de Tregars was too much on his guard to expose himself, by continuing to speak thus, to reveal the secret of his designs.
Besides, whilst he was thoroughly satisfied as to the manoeuvres used to defraud his father he had, as yet, but presumptions on what concerned Vincent Favoral.
“Permit me not to say another word, madame,” he replied. “I have told you enough to enable you to judge of the value of my weapons.”
She must have felt that she could not make him change his mind, for she rose to go.
“That is sufficient,” she uttered. “I shall reflect; and to-morrow I shall give you an answer.”
She started to go; but M. de Tregars threw himself quickly between her and the door.
“Excuse me,” he said; “but it is not to-morrow that I want an answer: it is to-night, this instant!”
Ah, if she could have annihilated him with a look.
“Why, this is violence,” she said in a voice which betrayed the incredible effort she was making to control herself.
“It is imposed upon me by circumstances, madame.”
“You would be less exacting, if my husband were here.”
He must have been within hearing; for suddenly the door opened, and he appeared upon the threshold. There are people for whom the unforeseen does not exist, and whom no event can disconcert. Having ventured every thing, they expect every thing. Such was the Baron de Thaller. With a sagacious glance he examined his wife and M. de Tregars; and in a cordial tone,
“We are quarreling here?” he said.
“I am glad you have come!” exclaimed the baroness.
“What is the matter?”
“The matter is, that M. de Tregars is endeavoring to take an odious advantage of some incidents of our past life.”
“There’s woman’s exaggeration for you!” he said laughing.
And, holding out his hand to Marius,
“Let me make your peace--for you, my dear marquis,” he said: “that’s within the province of the husband.” But, instead of taking his extended hand, M. de Tregars stepped back.
“There is no more peace possible, sir, I am an enemy.”
“An enemy!” he repeated in a tone of surprise which was wonderfully well assumed, if it was not real.
“Yes,” interrupted the baroness; “and I must speak to you at once, Frederic. Come: M. de Tregars will wait for you.”
And she led her husband into the adjoining room, not without first casting upon Marius a look of burning and triumphant hatred.
Left alone, M. de Tregars sat down. Far from annoying him, this sudden intervention of the manager of the Mutual Credit seemed to him a stroke of fortune. It spared him an explanation more painful still than the first, and the unpleasant necessity of having to confound a villain by proving his infamy to him.
“And besides,” he thought, “when the husband and the wife have consulted with each other, they will acknowledge that they cannot resist, and that it is best to surrender.” The deliberation was brief. In less than ten minutes, M. de Thaller returned alone. He was pale; and his face expressed well the grief of an honest man who discovers too late that he has misplaced his confidence.
“My wife has told me all, sir,” he began.
M. de Tregars had risen. “Well?” he asked.
“You see me distressed. Ah, M. le Marquis! how could I ever expect such a thing from you?--you, whom I thought I had the right to look upon as a friend. And it is you, who, when a great misfortune befalls me, attempts to give me the finishing stroke. It is you who would crush me under the weight of slanders gathered in the gutter.”
M. de Tregars stopped him with a gesture.
“Mme. de Thaller cannot have correctly repeated my words to you, else you would not utter that word ‘slander.’”
“She has repeated them to me without the least change.”
“Then she cannot have told you the importance of the proofs I have in my hands.”
But the Baron persisted, as Mlle. Cesarine would have said, to “do it up in the tender style.”
“There is scarcely a family,” he resumed, “in which there is not some one of those painful secrets which they try to withhold from the wickedness of the world. There is one in mine. Yes, it is true, that before our marriage, my wife had had a child, whom poverty had compelled her to abandon. We have since done everything that was humanly possible to find that child, but without success. It is a great misfortune, which has weighed upon our life; but it is not a crime. If, however, you deem it your interest to divulge our secret, and to disgrace a woman, you are free to do so: I cannot prevent you. But I declare it to you, that fact is the only thing real in your accusations. You say that your father has been duped and defrauded. From whom did you get such an idea?
“From Marcolet, doubtless, a man without character, who has become my mortal enemy since the day when he tried a sharp game on me, and came out second best. Or from Costeclar, perhaps, who does not forgive me for having refused him my daughter’s hand, and who hates me because I know that he committed forgery once, and that he would be in prison but for your father’s extreme indulgence. Well, Costeclar and Marcolet have deceived you. If the Marquis de Tregars ruined himself, it is because he undertook a business that he knew nothing about, and speculated right and left. It does not take long to sink a fortune, even without the assistance of thieves.
“As to pretend that I have benefitted by the embezzlements of my cashier that is simply stupid; and there can be no one to suggest such a thing, except Jottras and Saint Pavin, two scoundrels whom I have had ten times the opportunity to send to prison and who were the accomplices of Favoral. Besides, the matter is in the hands of justice; and I shall prove in the broad daylight of the court-room, as I have already done in the office of the examining judge, that, to save the Mutual Credit, I have sacrificed more than half my private fortune.”
Tired of this speech, the evident object of which was to lead him to discuss, and to betray himself,
“Conclude, sir,” M. de Tregars interrupted harshly. Still in the same placid tone,
“To conclude is easy enough,” replied the baron. “My wife has told me that you were about to marry the daughter of my old cashier,--a very handsome girl, but without a sou. She ought to have a dowry.”
“Sir!”
“Let us show our hands. I am in a critical position: you know it, and you are trying to take advantage of it. Very well: we can still come to an understanding. What would you say, if I were to give to Mlle. Gilberte the dowry I intended for my daughter?”
All M. de Tregars’ blood rushed to his face.
“Ah, not another word!” he exclaimed with a gesture of unprecedented violence. But, controlling himself almost at once,
“I demand,” he added, “my father’s fortune. I demand that you should restore to the Mutual Credit Company the twelve millions which have been abstracted.”
“And if not?”
“Then I shall apply to the courts.”
They remained for a moment face to face, looking into each other’s eyes. Then,
“What have you decided?” asked M. de Tregars.
Without perhaps, suspecting that his offer was a new insult,
“I will go as far as fifteen hundred thousand francs,” replied M. de Thaller, “and I pay cash.”
“Is that your last word?”
“It is.”
“If I enter a complaint, with the proofs in my hands, you are lost.”
“We’ll see about that.”
To insist further would have been puerile.
“Very well, we’ll see, then,” said M. de Tregars. But as he walked out and got into his cab, which had been waiting for him at the door, he could not help wondering what gave the Baron de Thaller so much assurance, and whether he was not mistaken in his conjectures.
It was nearly eight o’clock, and Maxence, Mme. Favoral and Mlle. Gilberte must have been waiting for him with a feverish impatience; but he had eaten nothing since morning, and he stopped in front of one of the restaurants of the Boulevard.
He had just ordered his dinner, when a gentleman of a certain age, but active and vigorous still, of military bearing, wearing a mustache, and a tan-colored ribbon at his buttonhole, came to take a seat at the adjoining table.
In less than fifteen minutes M. de Tregars had despatched a bowl of soup and a slice of beef, and was hastening out, when his foot struck his neighbor’s foot, without his being able to understand how it had happened.
Though fully convinced that it was not his fault, he hastened to excuse himself. But the other began to talk angrily, and so loud, that everybody turned around.
Vexed as he was, Marius renewed his apologies.
But the other, like those cowards who think they have found a greater coward than themselves, was pouring forth a torrent of the grossest insults.
M. de Tregars was lifting his hand to administer a well-deserved correction, when suddenly the scene in the grand parlor of the Thaller mansion came back vividly to his mind. He saw again, as in the glass, the ill-looking man listening, with an anxious look, to Mme. de Thaller’s propositions, and afterwards sitting down to write.
“That’s it!” he exclaimed, a multitude of circumstances occurring to his mind, which had escaped him at the moment.
And, without further reflection, seizing his adversary by the throat, he threw him over on the table, holding him down with his knee.
“I am sure he must have the letter about him,” he said to the people who surrounded him.
And in fact he did take from the side-pocket of the villain a letter, which he unfolded, and commenced reading aloud,
“I am waiting for you, my dear major, come quick, for the thing is pressing,--a troublesome gentleman who is to be made to keep quiet. It will be for you the matter of a sword-thrust, and for us the occasion to divide a round amount.”
“And, that’s why he picked a quarrel with me,” added M. de Tregars.
Two waiters had taken hold of the villain, who was struggling furiously, and wanted to surrender him to the police.
“What’s the use?” said Marius. “I have his letter: that’s enough. The police will find him when they want him.”
And, getting back into his cab,
“Rue St. Gilles,” he ordered, “and lively, if possible.”
