The old lawyer, M. Chapelain, held him by the arm; but he struggled hard, and was about to burst into the parlor, when the door opened, and the director of the Mutual Credit stepped out.
With a coolness quite remarkable after such a scene, he advanced towards Mlle. Gilberte, and, in a tone of offensive protection,
“Your father is a wretch, mademoiselle,” he said; “and my duty should be to surrender him at once into the hands of justice. On account of your worthy mother, however, of your father himself, above all, on your own account, mademoiselle, I shall forbear doing so. But let him fly, let him disappear, and never more be heard from.”
He drew from his pocket a roll of bank-notes, and, throwing them upon the table,
“Hand him this,” he added. “Let him leave this very night. The police may have been notified. There is a train for Brussels at five minutes past eleven.”
And, having bowed, he withdrew, no one addressing him a single word, so great was the astonishment of all the guests of this house, heretofore so peaceful.
Overcome with stupor, Maxence had dropped upon his chair. Mlle. Gilberte alone retained some presence of mind.
“It is a shame,” she exclaimed, “for us to give up thus! That man is an impostor, a wretch; he lies! Father, father!”
M. Favoral had not waited to be called, and was standing up against the parlor-door, pale as death, and yet calm.
“Why attempt any explanations?” he said. “The money is gone; and appearances are against me.”
His wife had drawn near to him, and taken his hand. “The misfortune is immense,” she said, “but not irreparable. We will sell everything we have.”
“Have you not friends? Are we not here,” insisted the others—M. Desclavettes, M. Desormeaux, and M. Chapelain.
Gently he pushed his wife aside, and coldly.
“All we had,” he said, “would be as a grain of sand in an ocean. But we have no longer anything; we are ruined.”
“Ruined!” exclaimed M. Desormeaux—“ruined! And where are the forty-five thousand francs I placed into your hands?”
He made no reply.
“And our hundred and twenty thousand francs?” groaned M. and Mme. Desclavettes.
“And my sixty thousand francs?” shouted M. Chapelain, with a blasphemous oath.
The cashier shrugged his shoulders. “Lost,” he said, “irrevocably lost!”
Then their rage exceeded all bounds. Then they forgot that this unfortunate man had been their friend for twenty years, that they were his guests; and they commenced heaping upon him threats and insults without name.
He did not even deign to defend himself.
“Go on,” he uttered, “go on. When a poor dog, carried away by the current, is drowning, men of heart cast stones at him from the bank. Go on!”
“You should have told us that you speculated,” screamed M. Desclavettes.
On hearing these words, he straightened himself up, and with a gesture so terrible that the others stepped back frightened.
“What!” said he, in a tone of crushing irony, “it is this evening only, that you discover that I speculated? Kind friends! Where, then, and in whose pockets, did you suppose I was getting the enormous interests I have been paying you for years? Where have you ever seen honest money, the money of labor, yield twelve or fourteen per cent? The money that yields thus is the money of the gaming table, the money of the bourse. Why did you bring me your funds? Because you were fully satisfied that I knew how to handle the cards. Ah! If I was to tell you that I had doubled your capital, you would not ask how I did it, nor whether I had stocked the cards. You would virtuously pocket the money. But I have lost: I am a thief. Well, so be it. But, then, you are all my accomplices. It is the avidity of the dupes which induces the trickery of the sharpers.”
Here he was interrupted by the servant coming in. “Sir,” she exclaimed excitedly, “O sir! the courtyard is full of police agents. They are speaking to the concierge. They are coming up stairs: I hear them!”
III
According to the time and place where they are uttered, there are words which acquire a terrible significance. In this disordered room, in the midst of these excited people, that word, the “police,” sounded like a thunderclap.
“Do not open,” Maxence ordered; “do not open, however they may ring or knock. Let them burst the door first.”
The very excess of her fright restored to Mme. Favoral a portion of her energy. Throwing herself before her husband as if to protect him, as if to defend him,
“They are coming to arrest you, Vincent,” she exclaimed. “They are coming; don’t you hear them?”
He remained motionless, his feet seemingly riveted to the floor.
“That is as I expected,” he said.
And with the accent of the wretch who sees all hope vanish, and who utterly gives up all struggle,
“Be it so,” he said. “Let them arrest me, and let all be over at once. I have had enough anxiety, enough unbearable alternatives. I am tired always to feign, to deceive, and to lie. Let them arrest me! Any misfortune will be smaller in reality than the horrors of uncertainty. I have nothing more to fear now. For the first time in many years I shall sleep to-night.”
He did not notice the sinister expression of his guests. “You think I am a thief,” he added: “well, be satisfied, justice shall be done.”
But he attributed to them sentiments which were no longer theirs. They had forgotten their anger, and their bitter resentment for their lost money.
The imminence of the peril awoke suddenly in their souls the memories of the past, and that strong affection which comes from long habit, and a constant exchange of services rendered. Whatever M. Favoral might have done, they only saw in him now the friend, the host whose bread they had broken together more than a hundred times, the man whose probity, up to this fatal night, had remained far above suspicion.
Pale, excited, they crowded around him.
“Have you lost your mind?” spoke M. Desormeaux. “Are you going to wait to be arrested, thrown into prison, dragged into a criminal court?”
He shook his head, and in a tone of idiotic obstinacy,
“Have I not told you,” he repeated, “that every thing is against me? Let them come; let them do what they please with me.”
“And your wife,” insisted M. Chapelain, the old lawyer, “and your children!”
“Will
