Part 42

The marquis was listening with an air of suppressed wrath; his face was crimson, there was a dark frown on his brow, and his hands were clinched. He was apparently furious with passion, but in reality he was perfectly self-possessed. The best proof that can be given of his coolness is that he was carefully studying M. Fortunat’s face, and trying to discover the agent’s real intentions under his meaningless words. He had expected to find “his dear extortioner” exasperated by his loss, cursing and swearing, and demanding his money--but not at all. He found him more gentle and calm, colder and more reserved than ever; brimful of resignation indeed, and preaching submission to the inevitable. “What can this mean?” he thought, with an anxious heart. “What mischief is the scoundrel plotting now? I’d wager a thousand to one that he’s forging some thunderbolt to crush me.” And, in a haughty tone, he said aloud:

“In a word, you desert me.”

With a deprecatory gesture, M. Fortunat exclaimed: “I desert you, Monsieur le Marquis! What have I done that you should think so ill of me? Alas! circumstances are the only traitors. I shouldn’t like to deprive you of the courage you so much need, but, honestly, it would be folly to struggle against destiny. How can you hope to succeed in your plans? Have you not resorted to every possible expedient to prolong your apparently brilliant existence until the present time? Are you not at such a point that you must marry Mademoiselle Marguerite in a month’s time, or perish? And now the count’s millions are lost! If I might be allowed to give you some advice, I should say, ‘The shipwreck is inevitable; think only of saving yourself.’ By tact and shrewdness, you might yet save something from your creditors. Compromise with them. And if you need my services, here I am. Go to Nice, and give me a power of attorney to act for you. From the debris of your fortune, I will undertake to guarantee you a competence which would satisfy many an ambitious man.”

The marquis laughed sneeringly. “Excellent!” he exclaimed. “You would rid yourself of me and recover your forty thousand francs at the same time. A very clever arrangement.”

M. Fortunat realized that his client understood him; but what did it matter? “I assure you----” he began.

But the marquis silenced him with a contemptuous gesture. “Let us stop this nonsense,” said he. “We understand each other better than that. I have never made any attempt to deceive you, nor have I ever supposed that I had succeeded in doing so, and pray do me the honor to consider me as shrewd as yourself.” And still refusing to listen to the agent, he continued: “If I have come to you, it is only because the case is not so desperate as you suppose. I still hold some valuable cards which you are ignorant of. In your opinion, and every one else’s, Mademoiselle Marguerite is ruined. But I know that she is still worth three millions, at the very least.”

“Mademoiselle Marguerite?”

“Yes, Monsieur Twenty-per-Cent. Let her become my wife, and the very next day I will place her in possession of an income of a hundred and fifty thousand francs. But she must marry me first; and this scornful maiden will not grant me her hand unless I can convince her of my love and disinterestedness.”

“But your rival?”

M. de Valorsay gave a nervous start, but quickly controlled himself. “He no longer exists. Read this day’s Figaro, and you will be edified. I have no rival now. If I can only conceal my financial embarrassment a little longer, she is mine. A friendless and homeless girl cannot defend herself long in Paris--especially when she has an adviser like Madame Leon. Oh! I shall win her! I shall have her!--she is a necessity to me. Now you can judge if it would be wise on your part to deprive me of your assistance. Would you like to know what I want? Simply this--the means to sustain me two or three months longer--some thirty thousand francs. You can procure the money--will you? It would make, in all, seventy thousand francs that I should owe you, and I will promise to pay you two hundred and fifty thousand if I succeed--and I shall succeed! Such profit is worth some risk. Reflect, and decide. But no more subterfuges, if you please. Let your answer be plain yes or no.”

Without a second’s hesitation, M. Fortunat replied, “No.”

The flush on the marquis’s face deepened, and his voice became a trifle harsher; but that was all. “Confess, then, that you have resolved to ruin me,” he said. “You refuse before you have heard me to the end. Wait, at least, until I have told you my plans, and shown you the solid foundation which my hopes rest upon.”

But M. Fortunat had resolved to listen to nothing. He wished for no explanations, so distrustful was he of himself--so much did he fear that his adventurous nature would urge him to incur further risk. He was positively afraid of the Marquis de Valorsay’s eloquence; besides, he knew well enough that the person who consents to listen is at least half convinced. “Tell me nothing, monsieur,” he hastily answered; “it would be useless. I haven’t the money. If I had given you ten thousand francs last night, I should have been compelled to borrow them of M. Prosper Bertomy. And even if I had the money, I should still say ‘Impossible.’ Every man has his system--his theory, you know. Mine is, never to run after my money. With me, whatever I may lose, I regard it as finally lost; I think no more about it, and turn to something else. So your forty thousand francs have already been entered on my profit and loss account. And yet it would be easy enough for you to repay me, if you would follow my advice and go quietly into bankruptcy.”

“Never!” interrupted M. de Valorsay; “never! I do not wish to temporize,” he continued. “I will save all, or save nothing. If you refuse me your help, I shall apply elsewhere. I will never give my good friends, who detest me, and whom I cordially hate in return, the delicious joy of seeing the Marquis de Valorsay fall step by step from the high position he has occupied. I will never truckle to the men whom I have eclipsed for fifteen years. No, never! I would rather die, or even commit the greatest crime!”

He suddenly checked himself, a trifle astonished, perhaps, by his own plain-speaking; and, for a moment, he and M. Fortunat looked into each other’s eyes, striving to divine their respective secret thoughts.

The marquis was the first to speak. “And so,” said he, in a tone which he strove to make persuasive, but which was threatening instead, “it is settled--your decision is final?”

“Final.”

“You will not even condescend to listen to my explanation?”

“It would be a loss of time.”

On receiving this cruel reply, M. de Valorsay struck the desk such a formidable blow with his clenched fist that several bundles of papers fell to the floor. His anger was not feigned now. “What are you plotting, then?” he exclaimed; “and what do you intend to do? What is your object in betraying me? Take care! It is my life that I am going to defend, and as truly as there is a God in heaven, I shall defend it well. A man who is determined to blow his brains out if he is defeated, is a terribly dangerous adversary. Woe to you, if I ever find you standing between me and the Count de Chalusse’s millions!”

Every drop of blood had fled from M. Fortunat’s face, still his mien was composed and dignified. “You do wrong to threaten me,” said he. “I don’t fear you in the least. If I were your enemy, I should bring suit against you for the forty thousand francs you owe me. I should not obtain my money, of course, but I could shatter the tottering edifice of your fortune by a single blow. Besides, you forget that I possess a copy of our agreement, signed by your own hand, and that I have only to show it to Mademoiselle Marguerite to give her a just opinion of your disinterestedness. Let us sever our connection now, monsieur, and each go his own way without reference to the other. If you should succeed you will repay me.”

Victory perched upon the agent’s banner, and it was with a feeling of pride that he saw his noble client depart, white and speechless with rage. “What a rascal that marquis is,” he muttered. “I would certainly warn Mademoiselle Marguerite, poor girl, if I were not so much afraid of him.”

XIV.

M. Casimir, the deceased Count de Chalusse’s valet, was neither better nor worse than most of his fellows. Old men tell us that there formerly existed a race of faithful servants, who considered themselves a part of the family that employed them, and who unhesitatingly embraced its interests and its ideas. At the same time their masters requited their devotion by efficacious protection and provision for the future. But such masters and such servants are nowadays only found in the old melodramas performed at the Ambigu, in “The Emigre,” for instance, or in “The Last of the Chateauvieux.” At present servants wander from one house to another, looking on their abode as a mere inn where they may find shelter till they are disposed for another journey. And families receive them as transient, and not unfrequently as dangerous, guests, whom it is always wise to treat with distrust. The key of the wine-cellar is not confided to these unreliable inmates; they are intrusted with the charge of little else than the children--a practice which is often productive of terrible results.

M. Casimir was no doubt honest, in the strict sense of the word. He would have scorned to rob his master of a ten-sous piece; and yet he would not have hesitated in the least to defraud him of a hundred francs, if an opportunity had presented itself. Vain and rapacious in disposition, he consoled himself by refusing to obey any one save his employer, by envying him with his whole heart, and by cursing fate for not having made him the Count de Chalusse instead of the Count de Chalusse’s servant. As he received high wages, he served passably well; but he employed the best part of his energy in watching the count. He scented some great family secret in the household, and he felt angry and humiliated that this secret had not been intrusted to his discretion. And if he had discovered nothing, it was because M. de Chalusse had been caution personified, as Madame Leon had declared.

Thus it happened that when M. Casimir saw Mademoiselle Marguerite and the count searching in the garden for the fragments of a letter destroyed in a paroxysm of rage which he had personally witnessed, his natural curiosity was heightened to such a degree as to become unendurable. He would have given a month’s wages, and something over, to have known the contents of that letter, the fragments of which were being so carefully collected by the count. And when he heard M. de Chalusse tell Mademoiselle Marguerite that the most important part of the letter was still lacking, and saw his master relinquish his fruitless search, the worthy valet vowed that he would be more skilful or more fortunate than his master; and after diligent effort, he actually succeeded in recovering five tiny scraps of paper, which had been blown into the shrubbery.

They were covered with delicate handwriting, a lady’s unquestionably; but he was utterly unable to extract the slightest meaning from them. Nevertheless, he preserved them with jealous care, and was careful not to say that he had found them. The incoherent words which he had deciphered on these scraps of paper mixed strangely in his brain, and he grew more and more anxious to learn what connection there was between this letter and the count’s attack. This explains his extreme readiness to search the count’s clothes when Mademoiselle Marguerite told him to look for the key of the escritoire. And fortune favored him, for he not only found the key, but he also discovered the torn fragments of the letter, and having crumpled them up in the palm of his hand, he contrived to slip them into his pocket. Fruitless dexterity! M. Casimir had joined these scraps to the fragments he had found himself, he had read and re-read the epistle, but it told him nothing; or, at least, the information it conveyed was so vague and incomplete that it heightened his curiosity all the more. Once he almost decided to give the letter to Mademoiselle Marguerite, but he resisted this impulse, saying to himself: “Ah, no; I’m not such a fool! It might be of use to her.”

And M. Casimir had no desire to be of service to this unhappy girl, who had always treated him with kindness. He hated her, under the pretence that she was not in her proper place, that no one knew who or what she was, and that it was absurd that he--he, Casimir--should be compelled to receive orders from her. The infamous slander which Mademoiselle Marguerite had overheard on her way home from church, “There goes the rich Count de Chalusse’s mistress,” was M. Casimir’s work. He had sworn to be avenged on this haughty creature; and no one can say what he might have attempted, if it had not been for the intervention of the magistrate. Imperatively called to order, M. Casimir consoled himself by the thought that the magistrate had intrusted him with eight thousand francs and the charge of the establishment. Nothing could have pleased him better. First and foremost, it afforded him a magnificent opportunity to display his authority and act the master, and it also enabled him to carry out his compact with Victor Chupin, and repair to the rendezvous which M. Isidore Fortunat had appointed.