and that it would be more convenient for him to have a cot put up in his office; and thus you were twenty-four or forty-eight hours without seeing him. Surely this double existence must have weighed heavily upon him; but he was forbidden from breaking off with you, under penalty of being caught the very next day with his hand in the till. It is the respectability of his official life here which made the other possible—that which has absorbed such enormous sums. The harsher and the closer he were here, the more magnificent he could show himself elsewhere. His household in the Rue St. Gilles was for him a certificate of impunity. Seeing him so economical, every one thought him rich. People who seem to spend nothing are always trusted. Every privation which he imposed upon you increased his reputation of austere probity, and raised him farther above suspicion.”
Big tears were rolling down Mme. Favoral’s cheeks.
“Why not tell me the whole truth?” she stammered.
“Because I do not know it,” replied the commissary; “because these are all mere presumptions. I have seen so many instances of similar calculations!”
Then regretting, perhaps, to have said so much,
“But I may be mistaken,” he added: “I do not pretend to be infallible.” He was just then completing a brief inventory of all the papers found in the old desk. There was nothing left but to examine the drawer which was used for a cash drawer. He found in it in gold, notes, and small change, seven hundred and eighteen francs.
Having counted this sum, the commissary offered it to Mme. Favoral, saying,
“This belongs to you madame.”
But instinctively she withdrew her hand.
“Never!” she said.
The commissary went on with a gesture of kindness—“I understand your scruples, madame, and yet I must insist. You may believe me when I tell you that this little sum is fairly and legitimately yours. You have no personal fortune.”
The efforts of the poor woman to keep from bursting into loud sobs were but too visible.
“I possess nothing in the world, sir,” she said in a broken voice. “My husband alone attended to our business-affairs. He never spoke to me about them; and I would not have dared to question him. Alone he disposed of our money. Every Sunday he handed me the amount which he thought necessary for the expenses of the week, and I rendered him an account of it. When my children or myself were in need of any thing, I told him so, and he gave me what he thought proper. This is Saturday: of what I received last Sunday I have five francs left: that, is our whole fortune.”
Positively the commissary was moved.
“You see, then, madame,” he said, “that you cannot hesitate: you must live.”
Maxence stepped forward.
“Am I not here, sir?” he said.
The commissary looked at him keenly, and in a grave tone,
“I believe indeed, sir,” he replied, “that you will not suffer your mother and sister to want for any thing. But resources are not created in a day. Yours, if I have not been deceived, are more than limited just now.”
And as the young man blushed, and did not answer, he handed the seven hundred francs to Mlle. Gilberte, saying,
“Take this, mademoiselle: your mother permits it.” His work was done. To place his seals upon M. Favoral’s study was the work of a moment.
Beckoning, then, to his agents to withdraw, and being ready to leave himself,
“Let not the seals cause you any uneasiness, madame,” said the commissary of police to Mme. Favoral. “Before forty-eight hours, some one will come to remove these papers, and restore to you the free use of that room.”
He went out; and, as soon as the door had closed behind him,
“Well?” exclaimed M. Desormeaux;
But no one had any thing to say. The guests of that house where misfortune had just entered were making haste to leave. The catastrophe was certainly terrible and unforeseen; but did it not reach them too? Did they not lose among them more than three hundred thousand francs?
Thus, after a few commonplace protestations, and some of those promises which mean nothing, they withdrew; and, as they were going down the stairs,
“The commissary took Vincent’s escape too easy,” remarked M. Desormeaux. “He must know some way to catch him again.”
VI
At last Mme. Favoral found herself alone with her children and free to give herself up to the most frightful despair.
She dropped heavily upon a seat; and, drawing to her bosom Maxence and Gilberte,
“O my children!” she sobbed, covering them with her kisses and her tears—“my children, we are most unfortunate.”
Not less distressed than herself, they strove, nevertheless, to mitigate her anguish, to inspire her with sufficient courage to bear this crushing trial; and kneeling at her feet, and kissing her hands,
“Are we not with you still, mother?” they kept repeating.
But she seemed not to hear them.
“It is not for myself that I weep,” she went on. “I! what had I still to wait or hope for in life? Whilst you, Maxence, you, my poor Gilberte!—If, at least, I could feel myself free from blame! But no. It is my weakness and my want of courage that have brought on this catastrophe. I shrank from the struggle. I purchased my domestic peace at the cost of your future in the world. I forgot that a mother has sacred duties towards her children.”
Mme. Favoral was at this time a woman of some forty-three years, with delicate and mild features, a countenance overflowing with kindness, and whose whole being exhaled, as it were, an exquisite perfume of noblesse and distinction.
Happy, she might have been beautiful still—of that autumnal beauty whose maturity has the splendors of the luscious fruits of the later season.
But she had suffered so much! The livid paleness of her complexion, the rigid fold of her lips, the nervous shudders that shook her frame, revealed a whole existence of bitter deceptions, of exhausting struggles, and of proudly concealed humiliations.
And yet every thing seemed to smile upon her at the outset of life.
She was an only daughter; and her parents, wealthy silk-merchants, had brought her up like the daughter of an archduchess desired to marry some sovereign prince.
But at fifteen she had lost her mother. Her father, soon tired of his lonely fireside, commenced to seek away from home some diversion from his sorrow.
He was a man of weak mind—one of those marked in advance to play the part of eternal dupes. Having money, he found many friends. Having once tasted the cup of facile pleasures, he yielded readily
