Part 8 (2/2)

”Will you take a seat, dear Monsieur Lacheneur?” said he, with a politeness intended as a lesson for the duke; ”and you, also, Mademoiselle, do me the honor----”

But the father and the daughter both refused the proffered civility with a motion of the head.

”Monsieur le Duc,” continued Lacheneur, ”I am an old servant of your house----”

”Ah! indeed!”

”Mademoiselle Armande, your aunt, accorded my poor mother the honor of acting as my G.o.dmother----”

”Ah, yes,” interrupted the duke. ”I remember you now. Our family has shown great goodness to you and yours. And it was to prove your grat.i.tude, probably, that you made haste to purchase our estate!”

The former ploughboy was of humble origin, but his heart and his character had developed with his fortunes; he understood his own worth.

Much as he was disliked, and even detested, by his neighbors, everyone respected him.

And here was a man who treated him with undisguised scorn. Why? By what right?

Indignant at the outrage, he made a movement as if to retire.

No one, save his daughter, knew the truth; he had only to keep silence and Sairmeuse remained his.

Yes, he had still the power to keep Sairmeuse, and he knew it, for he did not share the fears of the ignorant rustics. He was too well informed not to be able to distinguish between the hopes of the _emigres_ and the possible. He knew that an abyss separated the dream from the reality.

A beseeching word uttered in a low tone by his daughter, made him turn again to the duke.

”If I purchased Sairmeuse,” he answered, in a voice husky with emotion, ”it was in obedience to the command of your dying aunt, and with the money which she gave me for that purpose. If you see me here, it is only because I come to restore to you the deposit confided to my keeping.”

Anyone not belonging to that cla.s.s of spoiled fools which surround a throne would have been deeply touched.

But the duke thought this grand act of honesty and of generosity the most simple and natural thing in the world.

”That is very well, so far as the princ.i.p.al is concerned,” said he. ”Let us speak now of the interest. Sairmeuse, if I remember rightly, yielded an average income of one thousand louis per year. These revenues, well invested, should have amounted to a very considerable amount. Where is this?”

This claim, thus advanced and at such a moment, was so outrageous, that Martial, disgusted, made a sign to his father, which the latter did not see.

But the cure hoping to recall the extortioner to something like a sense of shame, exclaimed:

”Monsieur le Duc! Oh, Monsieur le Duc!”

Lacheneur shrugged his shoulders with an air of resignation.

”The income I have used for my own living expenses, and in educating my children; but most of it has been expended in improving the estate, which today yields an income twice as large as in former years.”

”That is to say, for twenty years, Monsieur Lacheneur has played the part of lord of the manor. A delightful comedy. You are rich now, I suppose.”

”I possess nothing. But I hope you will allow me to take ten thousand francs, which your aunt gave to me.”

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