The former ploughboy slumbered in the bed of the Ducs de Sairmeuse; he ate from the ma.s.sive plate, graven with their coat-of-arms; he received his visitors in the magnificent salon in which the Ducs de Sairmeuse had received their friends in years gone by.
To those who had known him in former days, M. Lacheneur had become unrecognizable. He had adapted himself to his lofty station. Blushing at his own ignorance; he had found the courage--wonderful in one of his age--to acquire the education which he lacked.
Then, all his undertakings were successful to such a degree that his good fortune had become proverbial. That he took any part in an enterprise, sufficed to make it turn out well.
His wife had given him two lovely children, a son and a daughter.
His property, managed with a shrewdness and sagacity which the former owners had not possessed, yielded him an income of at least sixty thousand francs.
How many, under similar circ.u.mstances, would have lost their heads! But he, M. Lacheneur, had been wise enough to retain his _sang-froid_.
In spite of the princely luxury that surrounded him, his own habits were simple and frugal. He had never had an attendant for his own person. His large income he consecrated almost entirely to the improvement of his estate or to the purchase of more land. And yet, he was not avaricious.
In all that concerned his wife or children, he did not count the cost.
His son, Jean, had been educated in Paris; he wished him to be fitted for any position. Unwilling to consent to a separation from his daughter, he had procured a governess to take charge of her education.
Sometimes his friends accused him of an inordinate ambition for his children; but he always shook his head sadly, as he replied:
"If _I_ can only insure them a modest and comfortable future! But what folly it is to count upon the future. Thirty years ago, who could have foreseen that the Sairmeuse family would be deprived of their estates?"
With such opinions he should have been a good master; he was, but no one thought the better of him on that account. His former comrades could not forgive him for his sudden elevation.
They seldom spoke of him without wishing his ruin in ambiguous words.
Alas! the evil days came. Toward the close of the year 1812, he lost his wife, the disasters of the year 1813 swept away a large portion of his personal fortune, which had been invested in a manufacturing enterprise.
Compromised by the first Restoration, he was obliged to conceal himself for a time; and to cap the climax, the conduct of his son, who was still in Paris, caused him serious disquietude.
Only the evening before, he had thought himself the most unfortunate of men.
But here was another misfortune menacing him; a misfortune so terrible that all the others were forgotten.
From the day on which he had purchased Sairmeuse to this fatal Sunday in August, 1815, was an interval of twenty years.
Twenty years! And it seemed to him only yesterday that, blushing and trembling, he had laid those piles of louis d"or upon the desk of the receiver of the district.
Had he dreamed it?
He had not dreamed it. His entire life, with its struggles and its miseries, its hopes and its fears, its unexpected joys and its blighted hopes, all pa.s.sed before him.
Lost in these memories, he had quite forgotten the present situation, when a commonplace incident, more powerful than the voice of his daughter, brought him back to the terrible reality. The gate leading to the Chateau de Sairmeuse, to _his_ chateau, was found to be locked.
He shook it with a sort of rage; and, being unable to break the fastening, he found some relief in breaking the bell.
On hearing the noise, the gardener came running to the scene of action.
"Why is this gate closed?" demanded M. Lacheneur, with unwonted violence of manner. "By what right do you barricade my house when I, the master, am without?"
The gardener tried to make some excuse.
"Hold your tongue!" interrupted M. Lacheneur. "I dismiss you; you are no longer in my service."
He pa.s.sed on, leaving the gardener petrified with astonishment, crossed the court-yard--a court-yard worthy of the mansion, bordered with velvet turf, with flowers, and with dense shrubbery.
In the vestibule, inlaid with marble, three of his tenants sat awaiting him, for it was on Sunday that he always received the workmen who desired to confer with him.
They rose at his approach, and removed their hats deferentially. But he did not give them time to utter a word.
"Who permitted you to enter here?" he said, savagely, "and what do you desire? They sent you to play the spy on me, did they? Leave, I tell you!"
The three farmers were even more bewildered and dismayed than the gardener had been, and their remarks must have been interesting.
But M. Lacheneur could not hear them. He had opened the door of the grand salon, and dashed in, followed by his frightened daughter.
Never had Marie-Anne seen her father in such a mood; and she trembled, her heart torn by the most frightful presentiments.
She had heard it said that oftentimes, under the influence of some dire calamity, unfortunate men have suddenly lost their reason entirely; and she was wondering if her father had become insane.
It would seem, indeed, that such was the case. His eyes flashed, convulsive shudders shook his whole body, a white foam gathered on his lips.
He made the circuit of the room as a wild beast makes the circuit of his cage, uttering harsh imprecations and making frenzied gestures.
His actions were strange, incomprehensible. Sometimes he seemed to be trying the thickness of the carpet with the toe of his boot; sometimes he threw himself upon a sofa or a chair, as if to test its softness.
Occasionally, he paused abruptly before some one of the valuable pictures that covered the walls, or before a bronze. One might have supposed that he was taking an inventory, and appraising all the magnificent and costly articles which decorated this apartment, the most sumptuous in the chateau.
"And I must renounce all this!" he exclaimed, at last.
These words explained everything.
"No, never!" he resumed, in a transport of rage; "never! never! I cannot! I will not!"
Now Marie-Anne understood it all. But what was pa.s.sing in her father"s mind? She wished to know; and, leaving the low chair in which she had been seated, she went to her father"s side.
"Are you ill, father?" she asked, in her sweet voice; "what is the matter? What do you fear? Why do you not confide in me?--Am I not your daughter? Do you no longer love me?"
At the sound of this dear voice, M. Lacheneur trembled like a sleeper suddenly aroused from the terrors of a nightmare, and he cast an indescribable glance upon his daughter.
"Did you not hear what Chupin said to me?" he replied, slowly. "The Duc de Sairmeuse is at Montaignac; he will soon be here; and we are dwelling in the chateau of his fathers, and his domain has become ours!"
The vexed question regarding the national lands, which agitated France for thirty years, Marie understood, for she had heard it discussed a thousand times.
"Ah, well, dear father," said she, "what does that matter, even if we do hold the property? You have bought it and paid for it, have you not? So it is rightfully and lawfully ours."
M. Lacheneur hesitated a moment before replying.
But his secret suffocated him. He was in one of those crises in which a man, however strong he may be, totters and seeks some support, however fragile.
"You would be right, my daughter," he murmured, with drooping head, "if the money that I gave in exchange for Sairmeuse had really belonged to me."