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.
It was a curious spectacle, the return of those braves for whom Parisian slang had invented the new and significant expression offranc-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.
“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 fired with fresh energy. Should any thing extraordinary happen, beckon to me, and I’ll wait for you in the Rue des Minimes. But this is an expedient to which we must only resort in the last extremity. I should never forgive myself, were I to compromise your fair name.”
They had reached the Rue St. Gilles. Marius stopped.
“We must part,” he began.
But then only Mlle. Gilberte remembered M. de Tregars’ letter, which she had in her pocket. Taking it out, and handing it to him,
“Here,” she said, “is the package you deposited with me.”
“No,” he answered, repelling her gently, “keep that letter: it must never be opened now, except by the Marquise de Tregars.”
And raising her hand to his lips, and in a deeply agitated voice,
“Farewell!” he murmured. “Have courage, and have hope.”
Mlle. Gilberte was soon far away; and Marius de Tregars remained motionless at the corner of the street, following her with his eyes through the darkness.
She was walking fast, staggering over the rough pavement. Leaving Marius, she fell back upon the earth from the height of her dreams. The deceiving illusion had vanished, and, returned to the world of sad reality, she was seized with anxiety.
How long had she been out? She knew not, and found it impossible to reckon. But it was evidently getting late; for some of the shops were already closing.
Meantime, she had reached the house. Stepping back, and looking up, she saw that there was light in the parlor.
“Mother has returned,” she thought, trembling with apprehension.
She hurried up, nevertheless; and, just as she reached the landing, Mme. Favoral opened the door, preparing to go down.
“At last you are restored to me!” exclaimed the poor mother, whose sinister apprehensions were revealed by that single exclamation. “I was going out to look for you at random,—in the streets, anywhere.”
And, drawing her daughter within the parlor, she clasped her in her arms with convulsive tenderness, exclaiming,
“Where were you? Where do you come from? Do you know that it is after nine o’clock?”
Such had been Mlle. Gilberte’s state of mind during the whole of that evening, that she had not even thought of finding a pretext to justify her absence. Now it was too late. Besides, what explanation would have been plausible? Instead, therefore, of answering,
“Why, dear mother,” she said with a forced smile, “has it not happened to me twenty times to go out in the neighborhood?”
But Mme. Favoral’s confiding credulity existed no longer.
“I have been blind, Gilberte,” she interrupted; “but this time my eyes must open to evidence. There is in your life a mystery, something extraordinary, which I dare not try to guess.”
Mlle. Gilberte drew herself up, and, looking her mother straight in the eyes, with her beautiful, clear glance,
“Would you suspect me of something wrong, then?” she exclaimed.
Mme. Favoral stopped her with a gesture.
“A young girl who conceals something from her mother always does wrong,” she uttered. “It is a long while since I have had for the first time the presentiment that you were hiding something from me. But, when I questioned you, you succeeded in quieting my suspicions. You have abused my confidence and my weakness.”
This reproach was the most cruel that could be addressed to Mlle. Gilberte. The blood rushed to her face, and, in a firm voice,
“Well, yes,” said she: “I have a secret.”
“Dear me!”
“And, if I did not confide it to you, it is because it is also the secret of another. Yes, I confess it, I have been imprudent in the extreme; I have stepped beyond all the limits of propriety and social custom; I have exposed myself to the worst calumnies. But never,—I swear it,—never have I done any thing of which my conscience can reproach me, nothing that I have to blush for, nothing that I regret, nothing that I am not ready to do again to-morrow.”
“I said nothing, ‘tis true; but it was my duty. Alone I had to suffer the responsibility of my acts. Having alone freely engaged my future, I wished to bear alone the weight of my anxiety. I should never have forgiven myself for having added this new care to all your other sorrows.”
Mme. Favoral stood dismayed. Big tears rolled down her withered cheeks.
“Don’t you see, then,” she stammered, “that all my past suffering is as nothing compared to what I endure to-day? Good heavens! what have I ever done to deserve so many trials? Am I to be spared none of the troubles of this world? And it is through my own daughter that I am the most cruelly stricken!”
This was more than Mlle. Gilberte could bear. Her heart was breaking at the sight of her mother’s tears, that angel of meekness and resignation. Throwing her arms around her neck, and kissing her on the eyes,
“Mother,” she murmured, “adored mother, I beg of you do not weep thus! Speak to me! What do you wish me to do?”
Gently the poor woman drew back.
“Tell me the truth,” she answered.
Was it not certain that this was the very thing she would ask; in fact, the only thing she could ask? Ah! how much would the young girl have preferred one of her father’s violent scenes, and brutalities which would have exalted her energy, instead of crushing it!
Attempting to gain time,
“Well, yes,” she answered, “I’ll tell you every thing, mother, but not now, to-morrow, later.”
She was about to yield, however, when her father’s arrival cut short their conversation.
The cashier of the Mutual Credit was quite lively that night. He was humming a tune, a thing which did not happen to him four times a year, and which was indicative of the most extreme satisfaction. But he stopped short at the sight of the disturbed countenance of his wife and daughter.
“What is the matter?” he inquired.
“Nothing,” hastily answered Mlle. Gilberte,—“nothing at all, father.”
“Then you are crying for your amusement,” he said. “Come, be candid for once, and confess that Maxence has been at his tricks again!”
“You are mistaken, father: I swear it!”
He asked no further questions, being in his nature not very curious, whether because family matters were of so little consequence to him, or because he had a vague idea that his general behavior deprived him of all right to their confidence.
“Very well, then,” he said in a gruff tone, “let us all go to bed. I have worked so hard to-day, that I am quite exhausted. People who pretend that business is dull make me laugh. Never has M. de Thaller been in the way of making so much money as now.”
When he spoke, they obeyed. So that Mlle. Gilberte was thus going to have the whole night before her to resume possession of herself, to pass over in her mind the events of the evening, and deliberate coolly upon the decision she must come to; for, she could not doubt it, Mme. Favoral would, the very next day, renew her questions.
What should she say? All? Mlle. Gilberte felt disposed to do so by all the aspirations of her heart, by the certainty of indulgent complicity, by the thought of finding in a sympathetic soul the echo of her joys, of her troubles, and of her hopes.
Yes. But Mme. Favoral was still the same woman, whose firmest resolutions vanished under the gaze of her husband. Let a pretender come; let a struggle begin, as in the case of M. Costeclar,—would she have strength enough to remain silent? No!
Then it would be a fearful scene with M. Favoral. He might, perhaps, even go to M. de Tregars. What scandal! For he was a man who spared no one; and then a new obstacle would rise between them, more insurmountable still than the others.
Mlle. Gilberte was thinking, too, of Marius’s projects; of that terrible game he was about to play, the issue of which was to decide their fate. He had said enough to make her understand all its perils, and that a single indiscretion might suffice to set at nought the result of many months’ labor and patience. Besides, to speak, was it not to abuse Marius’s confidence. How could she expect another to keep a secret she had been unable to keep herself?
At last, after protracted and painful hesitation, she decided that she was bound to silence, and that she would only vouchsafe the vaguest explanations.
It was in vain, then, that, on the next and the following days, Mme. Favoral tried to obtain that confession which she had seen, as it were, rise to her daughter’s lips. To her passionate adjurations, to her tears, to her ruses even, Mlle. Gilberte invariably opposed equivocal answers, a story through which nothing could be guessed, save one of those childish romances which stop at the preface,—a schoolgirl love for a chimerical hero.
There was nothing in this very reassuring to a mother; but Mme. Favoral knew her daughter too well to hope to conquer her invincible obstinacy. She insisted no more, appeared convinced, but resolved to exercise the utmost vigilance. In vain, however, did she display all the penetration of which she was capable. The severest attention did not reveal to her a single suspicious fact, not a circumstance from which she could draw an induction, until, at last, she thought that she must have been mistaken.
The fact is, that Mlle. Gilberte had not been long in feeling herself watched; and she observed herself with a tenacious circumspection that could hardly have been expected of her resolute and impatient nature. She had trained herself to a sort of cheerful carelessness, to which she strictly adhered, watching every expression of her countenance, and avoiding carefully those hours of vague revery in which she formerly indulged.
For two successive weeks, fearing to be betrayed by her looks, she had the courage not to show herself at the window at the hour when she knew Marius would pass. Moreover, she was very minutely informed of the alternatives of the campaign undertaken by M. de Tregars.
More enthusiastic than ever about his pupil, the Signor Gismondo Pulei never tired of singing his praise, and with such pomp of expression, and so curious an exuberance of gesticulation, that Mme. Favoral was much amused; and, on the days when she was present at her daughter’s lesson, she was the first to inquire,
“Well, how is that famous pupil?”
And, according to what Marius had told him,
“He is swimming in the purest satisfaction,” answered the candid maestro. “Every thing succeeds miraculously well, and much beyond his hopes.”
Or else, knitting his brows—
“He was sad yesterday,” he said, “owing to an unexpected disappointment; but he does not lose courage. We shall succeed.”
The young girl could not help smiling to see her mother assisting thus the unconscious complicity of the Signor Gismondo. Then she reproached herself for having smiled, and for having thus come, through a gradual and fatal descent, to laugh at a duplicity at which she would have blushed in former times. In spite of herself, however, she took a passionate interest in the game that was being played between her mother and herself, and of which her secret was the stake. It was an ever-palpitating interest in her hitherto monotonous life, and a source of constantly-renewed emotions.
The days became weeks, and the weeks months; and Mme. Favoral relaxed her useless surveillance, and, little by little, gave it up almost entirely. She still thought, that, at a certain moment, something unusual had occurred to her daughter; but she felt persuaded, that, whatever that was, it had been forgotten.
So that, on the stated days, Mlle. Gilberte could go and lean upon the window, without fear of being called to account for the emotion which she felt when M. de Tregars appeared. At the expected hour, invariably, and with a punctuality to shame M. Favoral himself, he turned the corner of the Rue Turenne, exchanged a rapid glance with the young girl, and passed on.
His health was completely restored; and with it he had recovered that graceful virility which results from the perfect blending of suppleness and strength. But he no longer wore the plain garments of former days. He was dressed now with that elegant simplicity which reveals at first sight that rarest of objects,—a “perfect gentleman.” And, whilst she accompanied him with her eyes as he walked towards the Boulevard, she felt thoughts of joy and pride rising from the bottom of her soul.
“Who would ever imagine,” thought she, “that this young gentleman walking away yonder is my affianced husband, and that the day is perhaps not far, when, having become his wife, I shall lean upon his arm? Who would think that all my thoughts belong to him, that it is for my sake that he has given up the ambition of his life, and is now prosecuting another object? Who would suspect that it is for Gilberte Favoral’s sake that the Marquis de Tregars is walking in the Rue St. Gilles?”
And, indeed, Marius did deserve some credit for these walks; for winter had come, spreading a thick coat of mud over the pavement of all those little streets which are always forgotten by the street-cleaners.
The cashier’s home had resumed its habits of before the war, its drowsy monotony scarcely disturbed by the Saturday dinner, by M. Desclavettes’ naivetes or old Desormeaux’s puns.
Maxence, in the mean time, had ceased to live with his parents. He had returned to Paris immediately after the Commune; and, feeling no longer in the humor to submit to the paternal despotism, he had taken a small apartment on the Boulevard du Temple; but, at the pressing instance of his mother, he had consented to come every night to dine at the Rue St. Gilles.
Faithful to his oath, he was working hard, though without getting on very fast. The moment was far from propitious; and the occasion, which he had so often allowed to escape, did not offer itself again. For lack of any thing better, he had kept his clerkship at the railway; and, as two hundred francs a month were not quite sufficient for his wants, he spent a portion of his nights copying documents for M. Chapelain’s successor.
“What do you need so much money for?” his mother said to him when she noticed his eyes a little red.
“Every thing is so dear!” he answered with a smile, which was equivalent to a confidence, and yet which Mme. Favoral did not understand.
He had, nevertheless, managed to pay all his debts, little by little. The day when, at last, he held in his hand the last receipted bill, he showed it proudly to his father, begging him to find him a place at the Mutual Credit, where, with infinitely less trouble, he could earn so much more.
M. Favoral commenced to giggle.
“Do you take me for a fool, like your mother?” he exclaimed. “And do you think I don’t know what life you lead?”
“My life is that of a poor devil who works as hard as he can.”
“Indeed! How is it, then, that women are constantly seen at your house, whose dresses and manners are a scandal in the neighborhood?”
“You have been deceived, father.”
“I have seen.”
“It is impossible. Let me explain.”
“No, you would have your trouble for nothing. You are, and you will ever remain, the same; and it would be folly on my part to introduce into an office where I enjoy the esteem of all, a fellow, who, some day or other, will be fatally dragged into the mud by some lost creature.”
Such discussions were not calculated to make the relations between father and son more cordial. Several times M. Favoral had insinuated, that, since Maxence lodged away from home, he might as well dine away too. And he would evidently have notified him to do so, had he not been prevented by a remnant of human respect, and the fear of gossip.
On the other hand, the bitter regret of having, perhaps, spoiled his life, the uncertainty of the future, the penury of the moment, all the unsatisfied desires of youth, kept Maxence in a state of perpetual irritation.
The excellent Mme. Favoral exhausted all her arguments to quiet him.
“Your father is harsh for us,” she said; “but is he less harsh for himself? He forgives nothing; but he has never needed to be forgiven himself. He does not understand youth, but he has never been young himself; and at twenty he was as grave and as cold as you see him now. How could he know what pleasure is?—he to whom the idea has never come to take an hour’s enjoyment.”
“Have I, then, been guilty of any crimes, to be thus treated by my father?” exclaimed Maxence, flushed with anger. “Our existence here is an unheard-of thing. You, poor, dear mother!—you have never had the free disposition of a five-franc-piece. Gilberte spends her days turning her dresses, after having had them dyed. I am driven to a petty clerkship. And my father has fifty thousand francs a year!”
Such, indeed, was the figure at which the most moderate estimated M. Favoral’s fortune. M. Chapelain, who was supposed to be well informed, insinuated freely that his friend Vincent, besides being the cashier of the Mutual Credit, must also be one of its principal stock-holders. Now, judging from the dividend which had just been paid, the Mutual Credit must, since the war, have realized enormous profits. All its enterprises were successful; and it was on the point of negotiating a foreign loan which would infallibly fill its exchequer to overflowing.
M. Favoral, moreover, defended himself feebly from these accusations of concealed opulence. When M. Desormeaux told him, “Come, now, between us, candidly, how many millions have you?” he had such a strange way of affirming that people were very much mistaken, that his friends’ convictions became only the more settled. And, as soon as they had a few thousand francs of savings, they promptly brought them to him, imitated in this by a goodly number of the small capitalists of the neighborhood, who were wont to remark among themselves,
“That man is safer than the bank!”
Millionaire or otherwise, the cashier of the Mutual Credit became daily more difficult to live with. If strangers, those who had with him but a superficial intercourse, if the Saturday guests themselves, discovered in him no appreciable change, his wife and his children followed with anxious surprise the modifications of his humor.
If outwardly he still appeared the same impassible, precise, and grave man, he showed himself at home more fretful than an old maid, —nervous, agitated, and subject to the oddest whims. After remaining three or four days without opening his lips, he would begin to speak upon all sorts of subjects with amazing volubility. Instead of watering his wine freely, as formerly, he had begun to drink it pure; and he often took two bottles at his meal, excusing himself upon the necessity that he felt the need of stimulating himself a little after his excessive labors.
Then he would be taken with fits of coarse gayety; and he related singular anecdotes, intermingled with slang expressions, which Maxence alone could understand.
On the morning of the first day of January, 1872, as he sat down to breakfast, he threw upon the table a roll of fifty napoleons, saying to his children,
“Here is your New Year’s gift! Divide, and buy anything you like.”
And as they were looking at him, staring, stupid with astonishment,
“Well, what of it?” he added with an oath. “Isn’t it well, once in a while, to scatter the coins a little?”
Those unexpected thousand francs Maxence and Mlle. Gilberte applied to the purchase of a shawl, which their mother had wished for ten years.
She laughed and she cried with pleasure and emotion, the poor woman; and, whilst draping it over her shoulders,
“Well, well, my dear children,” she said: “your father, after all, is not such a bad man.”
Of which they did not seem very well convinced. “One thing is sure,” remarked Mlle. Gilberte: “to permit himself such liberality, papa must be awfully rich.”
M. Favoral was not present at this scene. The yearly accounts kept him so closely confined to his office, that he remained forty-eight hours without coming home. A journey which he was compelled to undertake for M. de Thaller consumed the balance of the week.
But on his return he seemed satisfied and quiet. Without giving up his situation at the Mutual Credit, he was about, he stated, to associate himself with the Messrs. Jottras, M. Saint Pavin of “The Financial Pilot,” and M. Costeclar, to undertake the construction of a foreign railway.
M. Costeclar was at the head of this enterprise, the enormous profits of which were so certain and so clear; that they could be figured in advance.
And whilst on this same subject,
“You were very wrong,” he said to Mlle. Gilberte, “not to make haste and marry Costeclar when he was willing to have you. You will never find another such match,—a man who, before ten years, will be a financial power.”
The very name of M. Costeclar had the effect of irritating the young girl.
“I thought you had fallen out?” she said to her father.
“So we had,” he replied with some embarrassment, “because he has never been willing to tell me why he had withdrawn; but people always make up again when they have interests in common.”
Formerly, before the war, M. Favoral would certainly never have condescended to enter into all these details. But he was becoming almost communicative. Mlle. Gilberte, who was observing him with interested attention, fancied she could see that he was yielding to that necessity of expansion, more powerful than the will itself, which besets the man who carries within him a weighty secret.
Whilst for twenty years he had, so to speak, never breathed a word on the subject of the Thaller family, now he was continually speaking of them. He told his Saturday friends all about the princely style of the baron, the number of his servants and horses, the color of his liveries, the parties that he gave, what he spent for pictures and objects of art, and even the very names of his mistresses; for the baron had too much respect for himself not to lay every year a few thousand napoleons at the feet of some young lady sufficiently conspicuous to be mentioned in the society newspapers.
M. Favoral confessed that he did not approve the baron; but it was with a sort of bitter hatred that he spoke of the baroness. It was impossible, he affirmed to his guests, to estimate even approximately the fabulous sums squandered by her, scattered, thrown to the four winds. For she was not prodigal, she was prodigality itself,—that idiotic, absurd, unconscious prodigality which melts a fortune in a turn of the hand; which cannot even obtain from money the satisfaction of a want, a wish, or a fancy.
He said incredible things of her,—things which made Mme. Desclavettes jump upon her seat, explaining that he learned all these details from M. de Thaller, who had often commissioned him to pay his wife’s debts, and also from the baroness herself, who did not hesitate to call sometimes at the office for twenty francs; for such was her want of order, that, after borrowing all the savings of her servants, she frequently had not two cents to throw to a beggar.
Neither did the cashier of the Mutual Credit seem to have a very good opinion of Mademoiselle de Thaller.
Brought up at hap-hazard, in the kitchen much more than in the parlor, until she was twelve, and, later, dragged by her mother anywhere,—to the races, to the first representations, to the watering-places, always escorted by a squadron of the young men of the bourse, Mlle. de Thaller had adopted a style which would have been deemed detestable in a man. As soon as some questionable fashion appeared, she appropriated it at once, never finding any thing eccentric enough to make herself conspicuous. She rode on horseback, fenced, frequented pigeon-shooting matches, spoke slang, sang Theresa’s songs, emptied neatly her glass of champagne, and smoked her cigarette.
The guests were struck dumb with astonishment.
“But those people must spend millions!” interrupted M. Chapelain.
M. Favoral started as if he had been slapped on the back.
“Bash!” he answered. “They are so rich, so awfully rich!”
He changed the conversation that evening; but on the following Saturday, from the very beginning of the dinner,
“I believe,” he said, “that M. de Thaller has just discovered a husband for his daughter.”
“My compliments!” exclaimed M. Desormeaux. “And who may this bold fellow be?”
“A nobleman, of course,” he replied. “Isn’t that the tradition? As soon as a financier has made his little million, he starts in quest of a nobleman to give him his daughter.”
One of those painful presentiments, such as arise in the inmost recesses of the soul, made Mlle. Gilberte turn pale. This presentiment suggested to her an absurd, ridiculous, unlikely thing; and yet she was sure that it would not deceive her,—so sure, indeed, that she rose under the pretext of looking for something in the side-board, but in reality to conceal the terrible emotion which she anticipated.
“And this gentleman?” inquired M. Chapelain.
“Is a marquis, if you please,—the Marquis de Tregars.”
Well, yes, it was this very name that Mlle. Gilberte was expecting, and well that she did; for she was thus able to command enough control over herself to check the cry that rose to her throat.
“But this marriage is not made yet,” pursued M. Favoral. “This marquis is not yet so completely ruined, that he can be made to do any thing they please. Sure, the baroness has set her heart upon it, oh! but with all her might!”
A discussion which now arose prevented Gilberte from learning any more; and as soon as the dinner, which seemed eternal to her, was over, she complained of a violent headache, and withdrew to her room.
She shook with fever; her teeth chattered. And yet she could not believe that Marius was betraying her, nor that he could have the thought of marrying such a girl as M. Favoral had described, and for money too! Poor, ah! No, that was not admissible. Although she remembered well that Marius had made her swear to believe nothing that might be said of him, she spent a horrible Sunday, and she felt like throwing herself in the Signor Gismondo’s arms, when, in giving her his lesson the following Monday,
“My poor pupil,” he said, “feels miserable. A marriage has been spoken of for him, for which he has a perfect horror; and he trembles lest the rumor may reach his intended, whom he loves exclusively.”
Mlle. Gilberte felt re-assured after that. And yet there remained in her heart an invincible sadness. She could hardly doubt that this matrimonial scheme was a part of the plan planned by Marius to recover his fortune. But why, then, had he applied to M. de Thaller? Who could be the man who had despoiled the Marquis de Tregars?
Such were the thoughts which occupied her mind on that Saturday evening when the commissary of police presented himself in the Rue St. Gilles to arrest M. Favoral, charged with embezzling ten or twelve millions.