the river flows. The kitchen, where the meals were taken, was on the first floor, even with the street; behind this room, the door and window of which opened upon the public thoroughfare, was a smaller one, used for bed chamber by Hervé, Christian's eldest son, and the younger brother Odelin, the apprentice at Master Raimbaud's. At the time, however, when this narrative opens, Odelin was absent from Paris, traveling in Italy with his master, who had gone to Milan in order to study the process by which the Milanese armors, as celebrated as those of Toledo, were manufactured. The upper floor of Christian's house consisted of two rooms. One of these he occupied himself with his wife Bridget; his daughter Hena occupied the other. Finally, a garret that served as storeroom for winter provisions, topped the house and had a window that opened upon the river.
On this evening Christian was in an animated conversation with his wife. It was late. The children were both asleep. A lamp lighted the room of the husband and wife. Near the window, with its small lozenge-shaped panes fastened between ribs of lead, lay the embroideries at which Bridget and Hena had been at work. In the rear of this rather spacious chamber stood the conjugal bed, surmounted with its canopy and enclosed by its curtains of orange serge. A little further away was a little book-case containing in neat rows the volumes in the printing of which Christian and his father contributed at the printing establishment of Masters Henry and Robert Estienne. In the same case Christian kept under lock his family legends and relics, together with whatever else that he attached special value to. Above the case an old cross-bow and battle axe hung from the wall. It was always well to have some arms in the house in order to repel the attacks of bandits who had of late grown increasingly bold. Two flat leather covered coffers for clothes and a few stools completed the humble furnishings of the room. Christian seemed greatly troubled in mind. Bridget, looking no less concerned than her husband, dropped the work that she expected to finish by lamp-light, and stepped towards her husband. With his eyes fixed upon the ground, his elbows upon his knees and his head in his hands, the latter observed:
"There can be no doubt. The person who stole the money, here, in this room, out of that case, and without breaking the lock, must be familiar with our house."
"I can assure you, Christian, since yesterday when we discovered the theft, I have been in a continuous fever."
"None but we and our children enter this room."
"No, excepting our customers or their employees. But as I am well aware that the Barbets are bold and wily enough to put on the disguise of honest merchants, whenever occasion demands it, in order to gain access to a house and steal, and that they might play that trick upon me under the pretext of bringing an order for some embroidery, neither Hena nor I ever leave the room when a stranger is with us."
"I am ransacking my mind for the intimate acquaintance who could have entered the room," the printer proceeded as if communing with himself with painful anxiety. "Occasionally, Lefevre spends an evening with us; I have come up into this room with him several times when he requested me to read some of our family legends to him."
"But, my friend, it is a long time since we have seen Lefevre; you yourself were wondering the other day what may have become of him; moreover, it is out of all question to suspect your friend, a man of austere morals, always wrapt in science."
"God prevent my suspecting him! I was only going over the extremely small number of persons who visit us familiarly."
"Then there is my brother. The fellow is, true enough, a soldier of adventure; he has his faults, grave faults, but—"
"Ah, Bridget, Josephin has for you and our children so tender a love, so touching—I hold him capable of doing almost anything in a hostile country, as is customary with people of his vocation; but he, who almost every day sits at our hearth—he, commit a theft in our house? Such a thought never crossed my mind—and never will!"
"Oh, I thank you for these words! I thank you!"
"And did you suppose that I suspected your brother? No! A thousand times, no!"
"What shall I say? The vagabond life that he has led since his early youth—the habits of violence and rapine with which the 'Franc-Taupins,' the 'Pendards,' and the other soldiers of adventure who are my brother's habitual companions are so justly reproached, might have caused suspicion to rise in some prejudiced mind, and—but my God—Christian—what ails you, tell me what ails you?" cried Bridget, seeing her husband hide his face between his hands in utter despair, and then suddenly rise and pace the room, as if pursued by a thought from which he sought to flee. "My friend," insisted Bridget, "what sudden thought has struck and afflicts you? There are tears in your eyes. Your face is strangely distorted. Answer me, I pray you!"
"I take heaven to witness," cried the artisan, raising his hands heavenward with a face that betrayed the tortures of his heart, "the loss of the twenty gold crowns, that we gathered so laboriously, is a serious matter to me; it was our daughter's dower; but that loss is as nothing beside—"
"Beside what? Let me know!"
"No. Oh, no! It is too horrible!"
"Christian, what have you in mind?"
"Leave me! Leave me!" but immediately regretting the involuntary rudeness, the artisan took Bridget's hands in his own, and said to her in a deeply moved voice: "Excuse me, poor, dear wife. You see, when I think of this affair I lose my head. When, at the printing shop, to-day, the horrible suspicion flashed through my mind, I feared it would drive me crazy! I struggled against it all I could—but a minute ago, as I was running over with you our intimate acquaintances who might be thought guilty of the theft, the frightful suspicion recurred to me. That is the reason of my distress."
Christian threw himself down again upon his stool; again a shudder ran over his frame and he hid his face between his hands.
"Tell me, my friend, what is the suspicion that assails you and that you so violently resist? Impart it to me, I pray you."
After a painful struggle with himself that lasted several minutes, the artisan murmured in a faint voice as if every word burnt his lips:
"Like myself, you noticed, recently—since about the time of Odelin's departure for Milan—you noticed, like myself, that a marked change has been coming over the nature and the habits of Hervé."
"Our son!" cried Bridget stupefied; and she added: "Mercy! Would you suspect him of so infamous an act?"
Christian remained steeped in a gloomy silence that Bridget, distracted with grief as she was, did not at first venture to disturb. Presently she proceeded:
"Impossible! Hervé, whom we brought up in the same principles as his brother—Hervé, who never was away from us—"
"Bridget, I told you, the suspicion is horrible; I have struggled against it with all my might," and the artisan's voice was smothered with sobs. "And yet, if after all it should be so! If our son is indeed the guilty one!"
"My friend, your suspicion bereaves me of my senses. You love Hervé so dearly, and your judgment is always so sound, your mind so penetrating, that I can not conceive how so unjustifiable a thought could take possession of you. Our son is continuously at the printing shop, at your side, as Hena is at mine; better than anyone else should you know your son's heart." Bridget remained silent for a moment and then proceeded while scalding tears rolled down her cheeks: "Oh, I feel it, even if your suspicion is never justified, it will embitter the rest of my life! Oh, to think our son capable of stealing!"
"And for that very reason there is no one else in the world but you, and you alone, to whom I confide the horrid suspicion.
