CHAPTER II

      M. DE CAZALIS HAS A PLAN

      IT was as Blanche had said, if her uncle had not formed certain plans he would not have shut her up in this way. The desire to hide the young woman’s condition did not justify the excessive precautions that M. de Cazalis was taking to isolate her, and keep her completely in his power. The merciless part played by Madame Lambert, the grave and severe attitude of the deputy, the solitary life she was made to lead, all warned the unfortunate girl that she was threatened with some cruel event which was being prepared in the dark. Maternal instinct told her that it was not her they sought to strike, but the infant that was still unborn. They were no doubt awaiting this little creature’s birth, and then something terrible would take place which she could not foresee, but the thought of which made her tremble.

      The fear which troubled Blanche was exaggerated. The solitude in which she lived caused her overexcitement and gave her horrible hallucinations. M. de Cazalis was not the sort of man to injure his reputation by martyrizing a child. He merely wished to make Blanche’s heir disappear as promptly as possible. But here, in a few words, is an account of the plan he had formed, along with the reasons that urged him to act as he did.

      Blanche at her father’s death, was possessed of several hundreds of thousands of francs. She was then ten years old. She went to live with her uncle, who was appointed her legal guardian and who, from that time, administered her fortune. However, he did not make any great inroad into her wealth; but at the sight of so much gold in his hands, he lost his head, cut a great dash and spent almost all he possessed. When his niece ran away with Philippe, he was in a dreadful fright of being called upon to produce the accounts of his guardianship, for if this fortune had been taken out of his control he would have been reduced to absolute poverty, as he had been living for several months entirely on his niece’s money.

      So long as the young girl remained with him, he knew he had nothing to fear. He could do what he pleased with her, bend her to his will like a piece of soft wax. The child’s weak character put him at ease. Such a doll would never dare to claim her own. He was counting on marrying her or placing her in a convent whilst giving her the least money possible, but the escapade of the two lovers had quite put him out of his reckoning. If he had burst into a passion, hunted them down, taken his niece violently back home, it was because he was afraid of a marriage between her and Philippe: he knew Philippe, and he knew he was a man to make him give up the last piece of gold. His interest was affected quite as seriously as his pride.

      While he was protesting aloud against a misalliance, he shuddered as he confessed to himself in his mind, that this misalliance would not merely be a stain on his coat of arms, but that it would also make a terrible hole in his purse, through which all his luxury and power would disappear.

      And now Blanche was to have an heir, and that heir would be more exacting than his mother. All his calculations were upset. He became merciless, insisted on dragging Philippe to the pillory, sought to render him infamous in order to cast some of the infamy on his child, and wished to deprive the infant of his rights before he even came into the world. When he heard that Philippe had fled and had thus escaped the infamy in store for him, his anxiety became absolute terror. He was ruined.

      The struggle was becoming terrible. If he were compelled to produce the accounts connected with his guardianship, he would become literally penniless. Indeed, he would feel extremely happy if he escaped so easily, at the cost of poverty, for he was not sure that he had not made too wide and visible an inroad into Blanche’s patrimony.

      In the one case if he kept both his niece and her money with him, he could continue to live in grand style and plunder the young girl in a legal way; in the other, if he were suddenly asked for a statement of accounts, if the capital placed in his hands were exacted in the child’s name, he would be obliged to ask for charity, in order not to die of hunger.

      It is easy to conceive with what energy he accepted the battle and how eagerly he sought to triumph.

      Blanche, for him, was nothing. At a simple look, on merely raising the voice, she trembled and consented to everything. But he shuddered at the thought of the child. That little creature who had not yet seen the light of day, made the all-powerful Cazalis turn pale. He caught himself hoping that it would be stillborn. He would not have destroyed it, out of pride for his race, but he prayed Providence to do the work. The poor little creature would grow up, and some day, prompted by the Cayols, might demand his mother’s wealth. This thought brought cold drops of perspiration to the deputy’s forehead. The Cayols were his great terror. If they ever became possessed of the child they would rear it as an instrument of vengeance. Then he thought of all the misfortunes that would fall upon his head: he would have to disgorge, hand over a whole fortune to these people whom he would have liked to crush; and as for himself, he would, perhaps, have to go begging along the roads.

      Those were the reasons that had made him shut up Blanche in the cottage on the seashore. He sought to isolate her from the Cayols, to prevent them coming to an understanding with her and stealing the child as soon as it was born. All the precautions he was taking, were in the view of obtaining full and entire possession of the infant. If he imprisoned Blanche it was solely for the purpose of imprisoning her babe. He had made up his mind to be there at the child’s birth for the purpose of seizing it and preventing it being made the instrument of his ruin. In the meantime, he had instructed Madame Lambert to keep watch in the vicinity of the cottage and to see that no one penetrated within. He feared surprise.

      He said to himself that he would only be in safety when he had secured the babe. Sometimes, at the bottom of his heart, he was almost pleased that his niece had been guilty of an irreparable fault. If she had married, he would only have succeeded with the utmost difficulty in retaining a small part of her fortune. Now, it was probable she would never marry; she would enter a convent to weep over her shame, and he could keep all her money with impunity. He tolerated Abbé Chastanier’s visits because he hoped the old priest would indicate religion to Blanche as a refuge. He felt that this way of getting rid of the unfortunate girl would certainly succeed.

      When