Part 24 (2/2)

”Perhaps I might get into Chesnel's house without being seen if we timed ourselves to arrive in the middle of the night?”

”That will be best. We shall be better able to hide this from my brother.--Poor angel! how unhappy he is!” said she, petting the unworthy child.

”Ah! now I begin to know what dishonor means; it has chilled my love.”

”Unhappy boy; what bliss and what misery!” And Mlle. Armande drew his fevered face to her breast and kissed his forehead, cold and damp though it was, as the holy women might have kissed the brow of the dead Christ when they laid Him in His grave clothes. Following out the excellent scheme suggested by the prodigal son, he was brought by night to the quiet house in the Rue du Bercail; but chance ordered it that by so doing he ran straight into the wolf's jaws, as the saying goes. That evening Chesnel had been making arrangements to sell his connection to M. Lepressoir's head-clerk. M. Lepressoir was the notary employed by the Liberals, just as Chesnel's practice lay among the aristocratic families. The young fellow's relatives were rich enough to pay Chesnel the considerable sum of a hundred thousand francs in cash.

Chesnel was rubbing his hands. ”A hundred thousand francs will go a long way in buying up debts,” he thought. ”The young man is paying a high rate of interest on his loans. We will lock him up down here. I will go yonder myself and bring those curs to terms.”

Chesnel, honest Chesnel, upright, worthy Chesnel, called his darling Comte Victurnien's creditors ”curs.”

Meanwhile his successor was making his way along the Rue du Bercail just as Mlle. Armande's traveling carriage turned into it. Any young man might be expected to feel some curiosity if he saw a traveling carriage stop at a notary's door in such a town and at such an hour of the night; the young man in question was sufficiently inquisitive to stand in a doorway and watch. He saw Mlle. Armande alight.

”Mlle. Armande d'Esgrignon at this time of night!” said he to himself.

”What can be going forward at the d'Esgrignons'?”

At the sight of mademoiselle, Chesnel opened the door circ.u.mspectly and set down the light which he was carrying; but when he looked out and saw Victurnien, Mlle. Armande's first whispered word made the whole thing plain to him. He looked up and down the street; it seemed quite deserted; he beckoned, and the young Count sprang out of the carriage and entered the courtyard. All was lost. Chesnel's successor had discovered Victurnien's hiding place.

Victurnien was hurried into the house and installed in a room beyond Chesnel's private office. No one could enter it except across the old man's dead body.

”Ah! M. le Comte!” exclaimed Chesnel, notary no longer.

”Yes, monsieur,” the Count answered, understanding his old friend's exclamation. ”I did not listen to you; and now I have fallen into the depths, and I must perish.”

”No, no,” the good man answered, looking triumphantly from Mlle.

Armande to the Count. ”I have sold my connection. I have been working for a very long time now, and am thinking of retiring. By noon to-morrow I shall have a hundred thousand francs; many things can be settled with that. Mademoiselle, you are tired,” he added; ”go back to the carriage and go home and sleep. Business to-morrow.”

”Is he safe?” returned she, looking at Victurnien.

”Yes.”

She kissed her nephew; a few tears fell on his forehead. Then she went.

”My good Chesnel,” said the Count, when they began to talk of business, ”what are your hundred thousand francs in such a position as mine? You do not know the full extent of my troubles, I think.”

Victurnien explained the situation. Chesnel was thunderstruck. But for the strength of his devotion, he would have succ.u.mbed to this blow.

Tears streamed from the eyes that might well have had no tears left to shed. For a few moments he was a child again, for a few moments he was bereft of his senses; he stood like a man who should find his own house on fire, and through a window see the cradle ablaze and hear the hiss of the flames on his children's curls. He rose to his full height --il se dressa en pied, as Amyot would have said; he seemed to grow taller; he raised his withered hands and wrung them despairingly and wildly.

”If only your father may die and never know this, young man! To be a forger is enough; a parricide you must not be. Fly, you say? No. They would condemn you for contempt of court! Oh, wretched boy! Why did you not forge /my/ signature? /I/ would have paid; I should not have taken the bill to the public prosecutor.--Now I can do nothing. You have brought me to a stand in the lowest pit in h.e.l.l!--Du Croisier! What will come of it? What is to be done?--If you had killed a man, there might be some help for it. But forgery--/forgery/! And time--the time is flying,” he went on, shaking his fist towards the old clock. ”You will want a sham pa.s.sport now. One crime leads to another. First,” he added, after a pause, ”first of all we must save the house of d'Esgrignon.”

”But the money is still in Mme. de Maufrigneuse's keeping,” exclaimed Victurnien.

”Ah!” exclaimed Chesnel. ”Well, there is some hope left--a faint hope.

Could we soften du Croisier, I wonder, or buy him over? He shall have all the lands if he likes. I will go to him; I will wake him and offer him all we have.--Besides, it was not you who forged that bill; it was I. I will go to jail; I am too old for the hulks, they can only put me in prison.”

”But the body of the bill is in my handwriting,” objected Victurnien, without a sign of surprise at this reckless devotion.

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