Part 13

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.

XXII

The hour had now come for the denouement of that home tragedy which was being enacted in the Rue St. Gilles.

The reader will remember the incidents narrated at the beginning of this story,--M. de Thaller’s visit and angry words with M. Favoral, his departure after leaving a package of bank-notes in Mlle. Gilberte’s hands, the advent of the commissary of police, M. Favoral’s escape, and finally the departure of the Saturday evening guests.

The disaster which struck Mme. Favoral and her children had been so sudden and so crushing, that they had been, on the moment, too stupefied to realize it. What had happened went so far beyond the limits of the probable, of the possible even, that they could not believe it. The too cruel scenes which had just taken place were to them like the absurd incidents of a horrible nightmare.

But when their guests had retired after a few commonplace protestations, when they found themselves alone, all three, in that house whose master had just fled, tracked by the police,--then only, as the disturbed equilibrium of their minds became somewhat restored, did they fully realize the extent of the disaster, and the horror of the situation.

Whilst Mme. Favoral lay apparently lifeless on an arm-chair, Gilberte kneeling at her feet, Maxence was walking up and down the parlor with furious steps. He was whiter than the plaster on the halls; and a cold perspiration glued his tangled hair to his temples.

His eyes glistening, and his fists clinched,

“Our father a thief!” he kept repeating in a hoarse voice, “a forger!”

And in fact never had the slightest suspicion arisen in his mind. In these days of doubtful reputations, he had been proud indeed of M. Favoral’s reputation of austere integrity. And he had endured many a cruel reproach, saying to himself that his father had, by his own spotless conduct, acquired the right to be harsh and exacting.

“And he has stolen twelve millions!” he exclaimed.

And he went on, trying to calculate all the luxury and splendor which such a sum represents, all the cravings gratified, all the dreams realized, all it can procure of things that may be bought. And what things are not for sale for twelve millions!

Then he examined the gloomy home in the Rue St. Gilles,--the contracted dwelling, the faded furniture, the prodigies of a parsimonious industry, his mother’s privations, his sister’s penury, and his own distress. And he exclaimed again,

“It is a monstrous infamy!”

The words of the commissary of police had opened his eyes; and he now fancied the most wonderful things. M. Favoral, in his mind, assumed fabulous proportions. By what miracles of hypocrisy and dissimulation had he succeeded in making himself ubiquitous as it were, and, without awaking a suspicion, living two lives so distinct and so different,--here, in the midst of his family, parsimonious, methodic, and severe; elsewhere, in some illicit household, doubtless facile, smiling, and generous, like a successful thief.

For Maxence considered the bills found in the secretary as a flagrant, irrefutable and material proof.

Upon the brink of that abyss of shame into which his father had just tumbled, he thought he could see, not the inevitable woman, that incentive of all human actions, but the entire legion of those bewitching courtesans who possess unknown crucibles wherein to swell fortunes, and who have secret filtres to stupefy their dupes, and strip them of their honor, after robbing them of their last cent.

“And I,” said Maxence,--“I, because at twenty I was fond of pleasure, I was called a bad son! Because I had made some three hundred francs of debts, I was deemed a swindler! Because I love a poor girl who has for me the most disinterested affection, I am one of those rascals whom their family disown, and from whom nothing can be expected but shame and disgrace!”

He filled the parlor with the sound of his voice, which rose like his wrath.

And at the thought of all the bitter reproaches which had been addressed to him by his father, and of all the humiliations that had been heaped upon him,

“Ah, the wretch!” he fairly shrieked, “--the coward!”

As pale as her brother, her face bathed in tears, and her beautiful hair hanging undone, Mlle. Gilberte drew herself up.

“He is our father, Maxence,” she said gently.

But he interrupted her with a wild burst of laughter. “True,” he answered; “and, by virtue of the law which is written in the code, we owe him affection and respect.”

“Maxence!” murmured the girl in a beseeching tone. But he went on, nevertheless,

“Yes, he is our father, unfortunately. But I should like to know his titles to our respect and our affection. After making our mother the most miserable of creatures, he has embittered our existence, withered our youth, ruined my future, and done his best to spoil yours by compelling you to marry Costeclar. And, to crown all these deeds of kindness, he runs away now, after stealing twelve millions, leaving us nothing but misery and a disgraced name.

“And yet,” he added, “is it possible that a cashier should take twelve millions, and his employer know nothing of it? And is our father really the only man who benefitted by these millions?”

Then came back to the mind of Maxence and Mlle. Gilberte the last words of their father at the moment of his flight,

“I have been betrayed; and I must suffer for all!”

And his sincerity could hardly be called in question; for he was then in one of those moments of decisive crisis in which the truth forces itself out in spite of all calculation.

“He must have accomplices then,” murmured Maxence.

Although he had spoken very low, Mme. Favoral overheard him. To defend her husband, she found a remnant of energy, and, straightening herself on her seat,

“Ah! do not doubt it,” she stammered out. “Of his own inspiration, Vincent could never have committed an evil act. He has been circumvented, led away, duped!”

“Very well; but by whom?”

“By Costeclar,” affirmed Mlle. Gilberte.

“By the Messrs. Jottras, the bankers,” said Mme. Favoral, “and also by M. Saint Pavin, the editor of ‘the Financial Pilot.’”

“By all of them, evidently,” interrupted Maxence, “even by his manager, M. de Thaller.”

When a man is at the bottom of a precipice, what is the use of finding out how he has got there,--whether by stumbling over a stone, or slipping on a tuft of grass! And yet it is always our foremost thought. It was with an eager obstinacy that Mme. Favoral and her children ascended the course of their existence, seeking in the past the incidents and the merest words which might throw some light upon their disaster; for it was quite manifest that it was not in one day and at the same time that twelve millions had been subtracted from the Mutual Credit. This enormous deficit must have been, as usual, made gradually, with infinite caution at first, whilst there was a desire, and some hope, to make it good again, then with mad recklessness towards the end when the catastrophe had become inevitable.

“Alas!” murmured Mme. Favoral, “why did not Vincent listen to my presentiments on that ever fatal day when he brought M. de Thaller, M. Jottras, and M. Saint Pavin to dine here? They promised him a fortune.”

Maxence and Mlle. Gilberte were too young at the time of that dinner to have preserved any remembrance of it; but they remembered many other circumstances, which, at the time they had taken place, had not struck them. They understood now the temper of their father, his perpetual irritation, and the spasms of his humor. When his friends were heaping insults upon him, he had exclaimed,

“Be it so! let them arrest me; and to-night, for the first time in many years, I shall sleep in peace.”

There were years, then, that he lived, as it were upon burning coals, trembling at the fear of discovery, and wondering, as he went to sleep each night, whether he would not be awakened by the rude hand of the police tapping him on the shoulder. No one better than Mme. Favoral could affirm it.

“Your father, my children,” she said, “had long since lost his sleep. There was hardly ever a night that he did not get up and walk the room for hours.”

They understood, now, his efforts to compel Mlle. Gilberte to marry M. Costeclar.

“He thought that Costeclar would help him out of the scrape,” suggested Maxence to his sister.

The poor girl shuddered at the thought, and she could not help feeling thankful to her father for not having told her his situation; for would she have had the sublime courage to refuse the sacrifice, if her father had told her?

“I have stolen! I am lost! Costeclar alone can save me; and he will save me if you become his wife.”

M. Favoral’s pleasant behavior during the siege was quite natural. Then he had no fears; and one could understand how in the most critical hours of the Commune, when Paris was in flames, he could have exclaimed almost cheerfully,

“Ah! this time it is indeed the final liquidation.”

Doubtless, in the bottom of his heart, he wished that Paris might be destroyed, and, with it, the evidences of his crime. And perhaps he was not the only one to form that impious wish.

“That’s why, then,” exclaimed Maxence,--“that’s why my father treated me so rudely: that’s why he so obstinately persisted in closing the offices of the Mutual Credit against me.”

He was interrupted by a violent ringing of the door-bell. He looked at the clock: ten o’clock was about to strike.

“Who can call so late?” said Mme. Favoral.

Something like a discussion was heard in the hall,--a voice hoarse with anger, and the servant’s voice.

“Go and see who’s there,” said Gilberte to her brother.

It was useless; the servant appeared.

“It’s M. Bertan,” she commenced, “the baker--” He had followed her, and, pushing her aside with his robust arm, he appeared himself. He was a man about forty years of age, tall, thin, already bald, and wearing his beard trimmed close.

“M. Favoral?” he inquired.

“My father is not at home,” replied Maxence.

“It’s true, then, what I have just been told?”

“What?”

“That the police came to arrest him, and he escaped through a window.”

“It’s true,” replied Maxence gently.

The baker seemed prostrated.

“And my money?” he asked.

“What money?”

“Why, my ten thousand francs! Ten thousand francs which I brought to M. Favoral, in gold, you hear? in ten rolls, which I placed there, on that very table, and for which he gave me a receipt. Here it is,--his receipt.”

He held out a paper; but Maxence did not take it.

“I do not doubt your word, sir,” he replied; “but my father’s business is not ours.”

“You refuse to give me back my money?”

“Neither my mother, my sister, nor myself, have any thing.”

The blood rushed to the man’s face, and, with a tongue made thick by anger,

“And you think you are going to pay me off in that way?” he exclaimed. “You have nothing! Poor little fellow! And will you tell me, then, what has become of the twenty millions your father has stolen? for he has stolen twenty millions. I know it: I have been told so. Where are they?”

“The police, sir, has placed the seals over my fathers papers.”

“The police?” interrupted the baker, “the seals? What do I care for that? It’s my money I want: do you hear? Justice is going to take a hand in it, is it? Arrest your father, try him? What good will that do me? He will be condemned to two or three years’ imprisonment. Will that give me a cent? He will serve out his time quietly; and, when he gets out of prison, he’ll get hold of the pile that he’s got hidden somewhere; and while I starve, he’ll spend my money under my very nose. No, no! Things won’t suit me that way. It’s at once that I want to be paid.”

And throwing himself upon a chair his head back, and his legs stretched forward--

“And what’s more,” he declared, “I am not going out of here until I am paid.”

It was not without the greatest efforts that Maxence managed to keep his temper.

“Your insults are useless, sir,” he commenced.

The man jumped up from his seat.

“Insults!” he cried in a voice that could have been heard all through the house. “Do you call it an insult when a man claims his own? If you think you can make me hush, you are mistaken in your man, M. Favoral, Jun. I am not rich myself: my father has not stolen to leave me an income. It is not in gambling at the bourse that I made these ten thousand francs. It is by the sweat of my body, by working hard night and day for years, by depriving myself of a glass of wine when I was thirsty. And I am to lose them? By the holy name of heaven, we’ll have to see about that! If everybody was like me, there would not be so many scoundrels going about, their pockets filled with other people’s money, and from the top of their carriage laughing at the poor fools they have ruined. Come, my ten thousand francs, canaille, or I take my pay on your back.”

Maxence, enraged, was about to throw himself upon the man, and a disgusting struggle was about to begin, when Mlle. Gilberte stepped between them.