Bridou himself, this time, sincerely shared the bewilderment of his friend, and the bailiff broke the silence by saying to Jacques:
"Humph, humph, old fellow, this is another affair to selling your fir-trees, I think."
Marie expected an explosion of wrath from her pa.s.sionate husband. There was no such thing.
Jacques remained silent, immovable, and absorbed for a long time. His broad face was more florid than usual. He drank, one after another, two great gla.s.ses of wine, leaned his elbows on the table, with his chin in the palm of his hand, drumming convulsively on his fat cheek with his contracted fingers. Fixing on his wife"s face his two little gray eyes, which glittered under his frowning eyebrows with a sinister light, he said, with apparent calmness:
"You say then, madame, that all the silver--"
"Monsieur--"
"Come, speak out, you see that I am calm."
Frederick rose instinctively and stood by his mother as if to protect her, so much did his father"s composure frighten him.
"My child, sit down," said Marie, in a sweet, gentle voice.
Frederick returned to his place at the table and sat down. This unexpected movement on the part of Frederick had been observed by M.
Bastien, who contented himself with questioning his wife, without changing his att.i.tude, and continuing to drum with the ends of his fat fingers upon his left cheek.
"You say, then, madame, that the silver, that my silver--"
"Ah, well, monsieur," replied Marie, in a firm voice, "your silver, I have sold it."
"You have sold it?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"And to whom?"
"To a silversmith in Pont Brillant."
"What is his name?"
"I do not know, monsieur."
"Truly?"
"It was not I who went to town to sell the silver, monsieur."
"Then who did?"
"No matter, monsieur, it is sold."
"That is true," replied Bastien, emptying his gla.s.s again; "and why did you sell it, if you please,--sell this silver which belonged to me and to me alone?"
"My friend," whispered Bridou to Jacques, "you frighten me; get angry, shriek, storm, howl, I would rather see that than to see you so calm,--your forehead is as white as a sheet and full of sweat."
Bastien did not reply to his friend and continued:
"You have, madame, sold my silver to buy what?"
"I besought you, monsieur, to send me some money to help the victims of the overflow."
"The overflow!" exclaimed Jacques, with a burst of derisive laughter.
"That overflow has a famous back, it carries a good deal!"
"I will not add another word on this subject," replied Marie, in a firm and dignified tone.
A long silence followed.
Evidently Jacques was making a superhuman effort to restrain the violence of his feelings. He was obliged to rise from the table and go to the window, which he opened, in spite of the rigour of the weather, to cool his burning forehead, for wicked designs were fermenting in his brain, and he made every effort to conceal them. When he took his place at the table again, he threw on Marie a strange and sinister look, and said to her, with an accent of cruel satisfaction:
"If you knew how it is with me, since you have sold my silver, you would know that you have done me a real service."
Although the ambiguity of these words caused her some disquietude, and she was alarmed at the incomprehensible calmness of her husband, Marie felt a momentary relief, for she had feared that M. Bastien, yielding to the natural brutality of his character, might so far forget himself as to come to injury and threats in the presence of her son, who would interpose between his mother and father.
Without addressing another word to his wife, Jacques drank another gla.s.s of wine and said to his companion:
"Come, old fellow, we are going to eat cold dough, on plates of beaten iron; it is pot luck, as you say."
"Jacques," said the bailiff, more and more frightened at the calmness of Bastien, "I a.s.sure you I am not at all hungry."
"I--I am ravenous," said Jacques, with a satirical laugh; "it is very easily accounted for; joy always increases my appet.i.te, so, at the present moment, I am as hungry as a vulture."
"Joy, joy," repeated the bailiff; "you do not look at all joyous."
And Bridou added, addressing Marie, as if to rea.s.sure her, for, notwithstanding the hardness of his heart, he was almost moved to compa.s.sion:
"It is all the same, madame, our brave Jacques now and then opens his eyes and grits his teeth, but at the bottom, he is--"
"Good man," added Bastien, pouring out another drink; "such a good man, that he is a fool for it. It is all the same, you see, my old Bridou, I would not give my evening for fifty thousand francs. I have just realised a magnificent profit."
Jacques Bastien never jested on money matters, and these words, "I would not give my evening for fifty thousand francs," he p.r.o.nounced with such an accent of certainty and satisfaction that not only the bailiff believed in the mysterious words, but Madame Bastien believed in them also, and felt her secret terror increasing.
In fact, the affected calmness of her husband, who--a strange and unnatural thing--grew paler in proportion as he drank, his satirical smile, his eyes glittering with a sort of baleful joy, when from time to time he looked at Frederick and his mother, carried anguish to the soul of the young woman. So, at the end of the repast, she said to Jacques, after having made a sign to Frederick to follow her:
"Monsieur, I feel very much fatigued and quite ill; I ask your permission to retire with my son."
"As you please," replied Jacques, with a guttural laugh, already showing excess of drink, "as you please; where there is constraint there is no pleasure. Do not incommode yourself. I shall incommode myself no longer.
Be calm, have patience."
At these words, as ambiguous as the first, which no doubt hid some mental reservation, Marie, having nothing to say, rose, while Frederick, obeying a glance from his mother, approached Jacques, and said to him, respectfully:
"Good night, father."
Jacques turned around to Bridou, without replying to his son, and said, as he measured Frederick with a satirical glance:
"How do you like him?"