the threshold. He was scarcely sober when he left the shop, but now he was fairly drunk; his heavy shamble had become a stagger. “Oh, you wretch, you brigand!” howled his wife; “you’ve been drinking again!”
He succeeded in maintaining his equilibrium, and, gazing at her with the phlegmatic stare peculiar to intoxicated men, he replied: “Well, what of that! Can’t I have a little pleasure with my friends? I came across a couple of men who were just taking their fifteenth glass; why should I refuse a compliment?”
“You can’t hold yourself up.”
“That’s true.” And to prove it he tumbled on to a chair.
A torrent of abuse now flowed from Madame Vantrasson’s lips! M. Fortunat only imperfectly distinguished the words “thief,” “spy,” and “detective;” but he could not mistake the meaning of the looks which she alternately gave her husband and himself. “It’s a fortunate thing for you that my husband is in this condition,” her glances plainly implied, “otherwise there would be an explanation, and then we should see—”
“I’ve had a lucky escape,” thought the spurious clerk. But as matters stood there was nothing to fear. It was a case where one could show a brave front to the enemy without incurring the slightest danger. “Let your husband alone,” said he. “If he has only brought the paper that he was sent to fetch, I sha’n’t have lost my evening to oblige you.”
Vantrasson had brought not one sheet of stamped paper, but two. A bad pen and some muddy ink were produced, and M. Fortunat began to draw up an acknowledgment according to the established formula. However, it was necessary to mention the name of the creditor of whom he had spoken, and not wishing to state his own, he used that of poor Victor Chupin, who was at that very moment shivering at the door, little suspecting what liberty was being taken with his cognomen.
“Chupin!” repeated the vixen, as if to engrave the name on her memory; “Victor Chupin! I should just like to see him,” she added, viciously.
When the document was finished, it became necessary to wake Vantrasson, so that he might sign it. He did so with very good grace, and his wife appended her signature beside her husband’s. Thereupon M. Fortunat gave them in exchange the note which had served as a pretext for his visit. “And above all,” he remarked, as he opened the door to go, “don’t forget that you are to pay something on account each month.”
“Go to the devil, and your account with you!” growled Madame Vantrasson.
But Fortunat did not hear this. He was already walking down the road by the side of Chupin, who was saying: “Well, here you are, at last, m’sieur! I thought you had taken a lease of that old barrack. If ever I come here again, I’ll bring a foot-warmer with me.”
But one of those fits of profound abstraction to which determined seekers after truth are subject had taken possession of M. Fortunat, and made him oblivious of all surrounding circumstances. His heart had been full of hope when he reached the Asnieres Road, but he went away gloomy and despondent; and quite unconscious of the darkness, the mud, and the rain, which was again falling, he silently plodded along in the middle of the highway. Chupin was obliged to stop him at the city gate, and remind him that the cab was waiting.
“That’s true,” was M. Fortunat’s only answer. He entered the vehicle, certainly without knowing it; and as they rolled homeward, the thoughts that filled his brain to overflowing found vent in a sort of monologue, of which Chupin now and then caught a few words. “What a piece of business!” he muttered—“what a piece of business! I’ve had seven years’ experience in such matters, and yet I’ve never met with an affair so shrouded in mystery. My forty thousand francs are in a precarious condition. Certainly I’ve lost money before through heirs whose existence I hadn’t even suspected; but by reinstating these same heirs in their rights, I’ve regained my lost money, and received a handsome reward in addition; but in this case all is darkness; there isn’t a single gleam of light—not the slightest clew. If I could only find them! But how can I search for people whose names I don’t even know—for people who have escaped all the inquiries of the police? And where shall I look for them—in Europe, in America? It would be sheer madness! To whom, then, will the count’s millions go?”
It was only the sudden stoppage of the cab in front of his own door that recalled M. Fortunat to the realities of life. “Here are twenty francs, Victor,” he said to Chupin. “Pay the driver, and keep the rest yourself.”
As he spoke, he sprang nimbly to the ground. A handsome brougham, drawn by two horses, was standing before the house. “The Marquis de Valorsay’s carriage,” muttered M. Fortunat. “He has been very patient; he has waited for me—or, rather, he has waited for my ten thousand francs. Well, we shall see.”
III.
M. Fortunat had scarcely started off on his visit to the Vantrassons when the Marquis de Valorsay reached the Place de la Bourse.
“Monsieur has gone out,” said Madame Dodelin, as she opened the door.
“You must be mistaken, my good woman.”
“No, no; my master said you would, perhaps, wait for him.”
“Very well; I will do so.”
Faithful to the orders she had received, the servant conducted the visitor to the drawing-room, lit the tapers in the candelabra, and retired. “This is very strange!” growled the marquis. “Monsieur Fortunat makes an appointment, Monsieur Fortunat expects me to wait for him! What will happen next?” However, he drew a newspaper from his pocket, threw himself into an arm-chair, and waited.
By his habits and tastes, the Marquis de Valorsay belonged to that section of the aristocracy which has coined the term “high life” in view of describing its own manners and customs. The matters that engrossed the marquis’s frivolous mind were club-life and first performances at the opera and the leading theatres, social duties and visits to the fashionable watering-places, racing and the shooting and hunting seasons, together with his mistress and his tailor.
He considered that to ride in a steeple-chase was an act of prowess worthy of his ancestors; and when he galloped past the stand, clad as a jockey, in top-boots and a violet silk jacket, he believed he read admiration in every eye. This was his every-day life, which had been enlivened by a few salient episodes: two duels, an elopement with a married woman, a twenty-six hours’ seance at the gaming table, and a fall from his horse, while hunting, which nearly cost him his life. These acts of valor had raised him considerably in the estimation of his friends, and procured him a celebrity of which he was not a little proud. The newspaper reporters were constantly mentioning his name, and the sporting journals never failed to chronicle his departure from Paris or his arrival in the city.
Unfortunately, such a life of busy idleness has its trials and its vicissitudes, and M. de Valorsay was a living proof of this. He was only thirty-three, but in spite of the care he expended upon his toilette, he looked at least forty. Wrinkles were beginning to show themselves; it required all the skill of his valet to conceal the bald spots on his cranium; and since his fall from his horse, he had been troubled by a slight stiffness in his right leg, which stiffness became perfect lameness in threatening weather. Premature lassitude pervaded his entire person, and when he relaxed in vigilance even his eyes betrayed a distaste for everything—weariness, satiety as it were. All the same, however, he bore himself with an undeniable air of distinction, albeit
