She was examining him with all her power of penetration.
"Not at all, I confess," she replied. "But, if you are not one, how is it that you come to my house, without knowing me from this side of sole leather, to ask me a whole lot of questions, which I am fool enough to answer?"
"I told you I was a friend of M. Favoral."
"Who"s that Favoral?"
"That"s M. Vincent"s real name, madame."
She opened her eyes wide.
"You must be mistaken. I never heard him called any thing but Vincent."
"It is because he had especial motives for concealing his personality. The money he spent here did not belong to him: he took it, he stole it, from the Mutual Credit Company where he was cashier, and where he left a deficit of twelve millions."
Mme. Zelie stepped back as though she had trodden on a snake.
"It"s impossible!" she cried.
"It is the exact truth. Haven"t you seen in the papers the case of Vincent Favoral, cashier of the Mutual Credit?"
And, taking a paper from his pocket, he handed it to the young woman, saying, "Read."
But she pushed it back, not without a slight blush. "Oh, I believe you!" she said.
The fact is, and Marius understood it, she did not read very fluently.
"The worst of M. Vincent Favoral"s conduct," he resumed, "is, that, while he was throwing away money here by the handful, he subjected his family to the most cruel privations."
"Oh!"
"He refused the necessaries of life to his wife, the best and the worthiest of women; he never gave a cent to his son; and he deprived his daughter of every thing."
"Ah, if I could have suspected such a thing!" murmured Mme. Zelie.
"Finally, and to cap the-climax, he has gone, leaving his wife and children literally without bread."
Transported with indignation, "Why, that man must have been a horrible old scoundrel!" exclaimed the young woman.
This is just the point to which M. de Tregars wished to bring her.
"And now," he resumed, "you must understand the enormous interest we have in knowing what has become of him."
"I have already told you."
M. de Tregars had risen, in his turn. Taking Mme. Zelie"s hands, and fixing upon her one of those acute looks, which search for the truth down to the innermost recesses of the conscience, "Come, my dear child," he began in a penetrating voice, "you are a worthy and honest girl. Will you leave in the most frightful despair a family who appeal to your heart? Be sure that no harm will ever happen through us to Vincent Favoral."
She raised her hand, as they do to take an oath in a court of justice, and, in a solemn tone, "I swear," she uttered, "that I went to the station with M. Vincent; that he a.s.sured me that he was going to Brazil; that he had his pa.s.sage-ticket; and that all his baggage was marked, "Rio de Janeiro.""
The disappointment was great: and M. de Tregars manifested it by a gesture.
"At least," he insisted, "tell me who the woman was whose place you took here."
But already had the young woman returned to her feeling of mistrust.
"How in the world do you expect me to know?" she replied. "Go and ask Amanda. I have no accounts to give you. Besides, I have to go and finish packing my trunks. So good-by, and enjoy yourself."
And she went out so quick, that she caught Amanda, the chambermaid, kneeling behind the door.
"So that woman was listening," thought M. de Tregars, anxious and dissatisfied.
But it was in vain that he begged Mme. Zelie to return, and to hear a single word more. She disappeared; and he had to resign himself to leave the house without learning any thing more for the present.
He had remained there very long; and he was wondering, as he walked out, whether Maxence had not got tired waiting for him in the little Cafe where he had sent him.
But Maxence had remained faithfully at his post. And when Marius de Tregars came to sit by him, whilst exclaiming, "Here you are at last!" he called his attention at the same time with a gesture, and a wink from the corner of his eye, to two men sitting at the adjoining table before a bowl of punch.
Certain, now, that M. de Tregars would remain on the lookout, Maxence was knocking on the table with his fist, to call the waiter, who was busy playing billiards with a customer.
And when he came at last, justly annoyed at being disturbed, "Give us two mugs of beer," Maxence ordered, "and bring us a pack of cards."
M. de Tregars understood very well that something extraordinary had happened; but, unable to guess what, he leaned over towards his companion.
"What is it?" he whispered.
"We must hear what these two men are saying; and we"ll play a game of piquet for a subterfuge."
The waiter returned, bringing two gla.s.ses of a muddy liquid, a piece of cloth, the color of which was concealed under a layer of dirt, and a pack of cards horribly soft and greasy.
"My deal," said Maxence.
And he began shuffling, and giving the cards, whilst M. de Tregars was examining the punch-drinkers at the next table.
In one of the two, a man still young, wearing a striped vest with alpaca sleeves, he thought he recognized one of the rascally-looking fellows he had caught a glimpse of in Mme. Zelie Cadelle"s carriage-house.
The other, an old man, whose inflamed complexion and blossoming nose betrayed old habits of drunkenness, looked very much like a coachman out of place. Baseness and duplicity bloomed upon his countenance; and the brightness of his small eyes rendered still more alarming the slyly obsequious smile that was stereotyped upon his thin and pale lips.
They were so completely absorbed in their conversation, that they paid no attention whatever to what was going on around them.
"Then," the old one was saying, "it"s all over."
"Entirely. The house is sold."
"And the boss?"
"Gone to America."
"What! Suddenly, that way?"
"No. We supposed he was going on some journey, because, every day since the beginning of the week, they were bringing in trunks and boxes; but no one knew exactly when he would go. Now, in the night of Sat.u.r.day to Sunday, he drops in the house like a bombsh.e.l.l, wakes up everybody, and says he must leave immediately. At once we harness up, we load the baggage up, we drive him to the Western Railway Station, and good-by, Vincent!"
"And the young lady?"
"She"s got to get out in the next twenty-four hours; but she don"t seem to mind it one bit. The fact is we are the ones who grieve the most, after all."
"Is it possible?"
"It is so. She was a good girl; and we won"t soon find one like her."
The old man seemed distressed.
"Bad luck!" he growled. "I would have liked that house myself."
"Oh, I dare say you would!"
"And there is no way to get in?"
"Can"t tell. It will be well to see the others, those who have bought. But I mistrust them: they look too stupid not to be mean."
Listening intently to the conversation of these two men, it was mechanically and at random that M. de Tregars and Maxence threw their cards on the table, and uttered the common terms of the game of piquet, "Five cards! Tierce, major! Three aces."
Meantime the old man was going on, "Who knows but what M. Vincent may come back?"
"No danger of that!"
"Why?"
The other looked carefully around, and, seeing only two players absorbed in their game, "Because," he replied, "M. Vincent is completely ruined, it seems. He spent all his money, and a good deal of other people"s money besides. Amanda, the chambermaid, told me; and I guess she knows."
"You thought he was so rich!"
"He was. But no matter how big a bag is: if you keep taking out of it, you must get to the bottom."
"Then he spent a great deal?"
"It"s incredible! I have been in extravagant houses; but nowhere have I ever seen money fly as it has during the five months that I have been in that house. A regular pillage! Everybody helped themselves; and what was not in the house, they could get from the tradespeople, have it charged on the bill; and it was all paid without a word."
"Then, yes, indeed, the money must have gone pretty lively," said the old one in a convinced tone.
"Well," replied the other, "that was nothing yet. Amanda the chambermaid who has been in the house fifteen years, told us some stories that would make you jump. She was not much for spending, Zelie; but some of the others, it seems ..."
It required the greatest effort on the part of Maxence and M. de Tregars not to play, but only to pretend to play, and to continue to count imaginary points,-"One, two, three, four."
Fortunately the coachman with the red nose seemed much interested.
"What others?" he asked.
"That I don"t know any thing about," replied the younger valet. "But you may imagine that there must have been more than one in that little house during the many years that M. Vincent owned it,-a man who hadn"t his equal for women, and who was worth millions."
"And what was his business?"
"Don"t know that, either."
"What! there were ten of you in the house, and you didn"t know the profession of the man who paid you all?"
"We were all new."
"The chambermaid, Amanda, must have known."
"When she was asked, she said that he was a merchant. One thing is sure, he was a queer old chap."
So interested was the old coachman, that, seeing the punch-bowl empty, he called for another. His comrade could not fail to show his appreciation of such politeness.
"Ah, yes!" he went on, "old Vincent was an eccentric fellow; and never, to see him, could you have suspected that he cut up such capers, and that he threw money away by the handful."
"Indeed!"
"Imagine a man about fifty years old, stiff as a post, with a face about as pleasant as a prison-gate. That"s the boss! Summer and winter, he wore laced shoes, blue stockings, gray pantaloons that were too short, a cotton necktie, and a frock-coat that came down to his ankles. In the street, you would have taken him for a hosier who had retired before his fortune was made."
"You don"t say so!"
"No, never have I seen a man look so much like an old miser. You think, perhaps, that he came in a carriage. Not a bit of it! He came in the omnibus, my boy, and outside too, for three sous; and when it rained he opened his umbrella. But the moment he had crossed the threshold of the house, presto, pa.s.s! complete change of scene. The miser became pacha. He took off his old duds, put on a blue velvet robe; and then there was nothing handsome enough, nothing good enough, nothing expensive enough for him. And, when he had acted the my lord to his heart"s content, he put on his old traps again, resumed his prison-gate face, climbed up on top of the omnibus, and went off as he came."
"And you were not surprised, all of you, at such a life?"
"Very much so."
"And you did not think that these singular whims must conceal something?"
"Oh, but we did!"
"And you didn"t try to find out what that something was?"
"How could we?"
"Was it very difficult to follow your boss, and ascertain where he went, after leaving the house?"
"Certainly not; but what then?"
"Why," he replied, "you would have found out his secret in the end; and then you would have gone to him and told him, "Give me so much, or I peach.""
V
This story of M. Vincent, as told by these two honest companions, was something like the vulgar legend of other people"s money, so eagerly craved, and so madly dissipated. Easily-gotten wealth is easily gotten rid of. Stolen money has fatal tendencies, and turns irresistibly to gambling, horse-jockeys, fast women, all the ruinous fancies, all the unwholesome gratifications.
They are rare indeed, among the daring cut-throats of speculation, those to whom their ill-gotten gain proves of real service,-so rare, that they are pointed out, and are as easily numbered as the girls who leap some night from the street to a ten-thousand-franc apartment, and manage to remain there.