"If," said Morel, angrily, "you were not drunk, as you seem to be, I should be angry with you. Leave this apartment instantly!"
"Ha! ha! He"s a fine fellow with his elegant curve," said Bourdin, making an insulting allusion to the contorted figure of the poor lapidary. "I say, Malicorne, he has cheek enough to call this an apartment,--a hole in which I would not put my dog."
"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" exclaimed Madeleine, who had been so frightened that she could not say a word before. "Call for a.s.sistance; perhaps they are rogues. Take care of your diamonds!"
And, seeing these two ill-looking strangers come closer to his working-bench, on which his precious stones were still lying, Morel, fearful of some evil intentions, ran towards the table, and covered the jewels with his two hands.
Tortillard, still on the watch, caught at Madeleine"s words, observed the movement of the artisan, and said to himself:
"Ha! ha! ha! So they said he was a lapidary of sham stones; if they were mock he would not be afraid of being robbed; this is a good thing to know. So Mother Mathieu, who comes here so often, is a matcher of _real_ stones, after all, and has real diamonds in her basket; this is a good thing to know, and I"ll tell the Chouette," added Bras Rouge"s brat.
"If you do not leave this room, I will call in the guard," said Morel.
The children, alarmed at this scene, began to cry, and the idiotic mother sat up in her bed.
"If any one has a right to call for the guard, it is we, you Mister Twistabout," said Bourdin.
"And the guard would lend us a hand to carry you off to gaol if you resist," added Malicorne. "We have not the magistrate with us, it is true; but if you have any wish for his company, we"ll find you one, just out of bed, hot and heavy; Bourdin will go and fetch him."
"To prison! me?" exclaimed Morel, struck with dismay.
"Yes, to Clichy."
"To Clichy?" repeated the artisan, with an air of despair.
"It seems a hardish pill," said Malicorne.
"Well, then, to the debtors" jail, if you like that better," said Bourdin.
"You--what--indeed--why--the notary--ah, _mon Dieu_!"
And the workman, pale as death, fell on his stool, unable to add another word.
"We are bound bailiffs, come to lay hold of you; now are you fly?"
"Morel, it is the note of Louise"s master! We are undone!" exclaimed Madeleine, in a tone of agony.
"Hear the judgment," said Malicorne, taking from his dirty and crammed pocketbook a stamped writ.
After having skimmed over, according to custom, a part of this doc.u.ment in an unintelligible tone, he distinctly articulated the last words, which were, unfortunately, but too important to the artisan:
"Judgment finally given. The Tribunal condemns Jerome Morel to pay to Pierre Pet.i.t-Jean, merchant,[6] by every available means, even to the arrest of body, the sum of 1,300 francs, with interest from the day of protest, and to pay all other and extra costs. Given and judged at Paris, 13 September, etc., etc."
[6] The cunning notary, unable to prosecute in his own name, had made the unfortunate Morel give a blank acceptance, and had filled up the note of hand with the name of a third party.
"And Louise! Louise!" cried Morel, almost distracted in his brain, and apparently unheeding the long preamble which had just been read. "Where is Louise, then, for, doubtless, she has quitted the notary, since he sends me to prison? My child! My Louise! What has become of you?"
"Who the devil is Louise?" asked Bourdin.
"Let him alone!" replied Malicorne, brutally; "don"t you see the respectable old twaddler is not right in his nonsense-box?" Then, approaching Morel, he added: "I say, my fine fellow, right about file!
March on! Let us get out of here, will you, and have a little fresh air.
You stink enough to poison a cat in this here hole!"
"Morel!" shrieked Madeleine, wildly, "don"t go! Kill those wretches! Oh, you coward, not to knock them down! What! are you going to let them take you away? Are you going to abandon us all?"
"Pray don"t put yourself out of the way, ma"am," said Bourdin, with an ironical grin. "I"ve only just got to remark that if your good man lays his little finger on me, why I"ll make him remember it," continued he, swinging his loaded stick round and round.
Entirely occupied with thoughts of Louise, Morel scarcely heard a word of what was pa.s.sing. All at once an expression of bitter satisfaction pa.s.sed over his countenance, as he said:
"Louise has doubtless left the notary"s house; now I shall go to prison willingly." Then, casting a troubled look around him, he exclaimed: "But my wife! Her mother! The children! Who will provide for them? No one will trust me with stones to work at in prison, for it will be supposed my bad conduct has sent me there. Does this hard-hearted notary wish the destruction of myself and all my family also?"
"Once, twice, old chap," said Bourdin, "will you stop your gammon? You are enough to bore a man to death. Come, put on your things, and let us be off."
"Good gentlemen, kind gentlemen," cried Madeleine, from her sick-bed, "pray forgive what I said just now! Surely you will not be so cruel as to take my husband away; what will become of me and my five poor children, and my old mother, who is an idiot? There she lies; you see her, poor old creature, huddled up on her mattress; she is quite out of her senses, my good gentlemen; she is, indeed, quite mad!"
"La! what, that old bald-headed thing a woman? Well, hang me if that ain"t enough to astonish a man!"
"I"ll be hanged if it isn"t, then!" cried the other bailiff, bursting into a horse-laugh; "why, I took it for something tied up in an old sack. Look! her old head is shaved quite close; it seems as though she had got a white skull-cap on."
"Go, children, and kneel down, and beg of these good gentlemen not to take away your poor father, our only support," said Madeleine, anxious by a last effort to touch the hearts of the bailiffs. But, spite of their mother"s orders, the terrified children remained weeping on their miserable mattress.
At the unusual noise which prevailed, added to the aspect of two strange men in the room, the poor idiot turned herself towards the wall, as though striving to hide from them, uttering all the time the most discordant cries and moans. Morel, meanwhile, appeared unconscious of all that was going on; this last stroke of fate had been so frightful and unexpected, and the consequences of his arrest were so dreadful, that his mind seemed almost unequal to understanding its reality. Worn out by all manner of privations, and exhausted by over-toil, his strength utterly forsook him, and he remained seated on his stool, pale and haggard, and as though incapable of speech or motion, his head drooping on his breast, and his arms hanging listlessly by his side.
"Deuce take me," cried Malicorne, "if that old patterer is not going fast asleep! Why, I say, my chap, you seem to think nothing of keeping gen"l"men like us waiting; just remember, will you, our time is precious! You know this is not exactly a party of pleasure, so march, or I shall be obliged to make you."
Suiting the action to the word, the man grasped the artisan by the shoulder, and shook him roughly; which so alarmed the children, that, unable to restrain their terror, the three little boys emerged from their _pailla.s.se_, and, half naked as they were, came in an agony of tears to throw themselves at the feet of the bailiffs, holding up their clasped hands, and crying, in tones of touching earnestness:
"Pray, pray don"t hurt our dear father!"
At the sight of these poor, shivering, half-clad infants, weeping with affright, and trembling with cold, Bourdin, spite of his natural callousness and long acquaintance with scenes of this sort, could not avoid a feeling almost resembling compa.s.sion from stealing over him, while his pitiless companion, brutally disengaging himself from the grasp of the small, weak creatures who were clinging to him, exclaimed:
"Hands off, you young ragam.u.f.fins! A devilish fine trade ours would be, if we were to allow ourselves to be mauled about by a set of beggars"
brats like you!"
As though the scene were not sufficiently distressing, a fearful addition was made to its horrors. The eldest of the little girls, who had remained in the _pailla.s.se_ with her sick sister, suddenly exclaimed:
"Mother! mother! I don"t know what"s the matter with Adele! She is so cold, and her eyes are fixed on my face, and yet she does not breathe."
The poor little child, whose consumptive appearance we have before noticed, had expired gently, and without a sigh, her looks fixed earnestly on the sister she so tenderly loved.
No language can describe the cry which burst from the lips of the lapidary"s wife at these words, which at once revealed the dreadful truth; it was one of those wild, despairing, convulsive shrieks, which seem to sever the very heart-strings of a mother.
"My poor little sister looks as though she were dead!" continued the child; "she frightens me, with her eyes fixed on me, and her face so cold!"
Saying which, in an agony of terror, she leaped from beside the corpse of the infant, and ran to shelter herself in her mother"s arms, while the distracted parent, forgetting that her almost paralysed limbs were incapable of supporting her, made a violent effort to rise and go to the a.s.sistance of her child, whom she could not believe was actually past recovery; but her strength failed her, and with a deep sigh of despair she sunk upon the floor. That cry found an echo in the heart of Morel, and roused him from his stupor. He sprang with one bound to the _pailla.s.se_, and withdrew from it the stiffened form of an infant four years old, dead and cold. Want and misery had accelerated its end, although its complaint, which had originated in the positive want of common necessaries, was beyond the reach of any human aid to remove. Its poor little limbs were already rigid with death. Morel, whose very hair seemed to stand on end with despair and terror, stood holding his dead child in his arms, motionlessly contemplating its thin features with a fixed bloodshot gaze, though no tear moistened his dry, burning eyeb.a.l.l.s.
"Morel! Morel, give Adele to me!" cried the unhappy mother, extending her arms towards him; "she is not dead,--it is not possible! Let me have her, and I shall be able to warm her in my arms."