Part 8 (1/2)

”Do you ever pick up a thousand-franc note?”

”Now and then, master.”

”And you restore them?”

”It depends on the reward offered.”

”You're the man for me,” cried the Count, giving the man a thousand-franc note. ”Take this, but, remember, I give it to you on condition of your spending it at the wineshop, of your getting drunk, fighting, beating your wife, blacking your friends' eyes. That will give work to the watch, the surgeon, the druggist--perhaps to the police, the public prosecutor, the judge, and the prison warders. Do not try to do anything else, or the devil will be revenged on you sooner or later.”

A draughtsman would need at once the pencil of Charlet and of Callot, the brush of Teniers and of Rembrandt, to give a true notion of this night-scene.

”Now I have squared accounts with h.e.l.l, and had some pleasure for my money,” said the Count in a deep voice, pointing out the indescribable physiognomy of the gaping scavenger to the doctor, who stood stupefied.

”As for Caroline Crochard!--she may die of hunger and thirst, hearing the heartrending shrieks of her starving children, and convinced of the baseness of the man she loves. I will not give a sou to rescue her; and because you have helped her, I will see you no more----”

The Count left Bianchon standing like a statue, and walked as briskly as a young man to the Rue Saint-Lazare, soon reaching the little house where he resided, and where, to his surprise, he found a carriage waiting at the door.

”Monsieur, your son, the attorney-general, came about an hour since,”

said the man-servant, ”and is waiting for you in your bedroom.”

Granville signed to the man to leave him.

”What motive can be strong enough to require you to infringe the order I have given my children never to come to me unless I send for them?”

asked the Count of his son as he went into the room.