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than before. I lost courage—and yet one must live! Oh, you wouldn’t believe it if I told you how we have lived for the past four years.” She did not tell him, but contented herself with adding, “When you begin to go down hill, there is no such thing as stopping; you roll lower and lower, until you reach the bottom, as we have done. Here we live, no one knows how; we have to pay our rent each week, and if we are driven from this place, I see no refuge but the river.”
“If I had been in your position, I should have left my husband,” M. Fortunat ventured to remark.
“Yes—it would have been better, no doubt. People advised me to do so, and I tried. Three or four times I went away, and yet I always returned—it was stronger than myself. Besides, I’m his wife; I’ve paid dearly for him; he’s mine—I won’t yield him to any one else. He beats me, no doubt; I despise him, I hate him, and yet I——” She poured out part of a glass of brandy, and swallowed it; then, with a gesture of rage, she added: “I can’t give him up! It’s fate! As it is now, it will be until the end, until he starves, or I——”
M. Fortunat’s countenance wore an expression of profound commiseration. A looker-on would have supposed him interested and sympathetic to the last degree; but in reality, he was furious. Time was passing, and the conversation was wandering farther and farther from the object of his visit. “I am surprised, madame,” said he, “that you never applied to your former employer, the Count de Chalusse.”
“Alas! I did apply to him for assistance several times——”
“With what result?”
“The first time I went to him he received me; I told him my troubles, and he gave me bank-notes to the amount of five thousand francs.”
M. Fortunat raised his hands to the ceiling. “Five thousand francs!” he repeated, in a tone of astonishment; “this count must be very rich——”
“So rich, monsieur, that he doesn’t know how much he’s worth. He owns, nobody knows how many houses in Paris, chateaux in every part of the country, entire villages, forests—his gold comes in by the shovelful.”
The spurious clerk closed his eyes, as if he were dazzled by this vision of wealth.
“The second time I went to the count’s house,” resumed Madame Vantrasson, “I didn’t see him, but he sent me a thousand francs. The third and last time they gave me twenty francs at the door, and told me that the count had gone on a journey. I understood that I could hope for no further help from him. Besides, all the servants had been changed. One morning, without any apparent reason, M. de Chalusse dismissed all the old servants, so they told me. He even sent away the concierge and the housekeeper.”
“Why didn’t you apply to his wife?”
“M. de Chalusse isn’t married. He never has been married.”
From the expression of solicitude upon her guest’s features, Madame Vantrasson supposed he was racking his brain to discover some mode of escape from her present difficulties. “If I were in your place,” he said, “I should try to interest his relatives and family in my case——”
“The count has no relatives.”
“Impossible!”
“He hasn’t, indeed. During the ten years I was in his service, I heard him say more than a dozen times that he alone was left of all his family—that all the others were dead. People pretend that this is the reason why he is so immensely rich.”
M. Fortunat’s interest was no longer assumed; he was rapidly approaching the real object of his visit. “No relatives!” he muttered. “Who, then, will inherit his millions when he dies?”
Madame Vantrasson jerked her head. “Who can say?” she replied. “Everything will go to the government, probably, unless—— But no, that’s impossible.”
“What’s impossible?”
“Nothing. I was thinking of the count’s sister, Mademoiselle Hermine.”
“His sister! Why, you said just now that he had no relatives.”
“It’s the same as if he hadn’t; no one knows what has become of her, poor creature! Some say that she married; others declare that she died. It’s quite a romance.”
M. Isidore Fortunat was literally upon the rack; and to make his sufferings still more horrible, he dared not ask any direct question, nor allow his curiosity to become manifest, for fear of alarming the woman. “Let me see,” said he; “I think—I am sure that I have heard—or that I have read—I cannot say which—some story about a Mademoiselle de Chalusse. It was something terrible, wasn’t it?”
“Terrible, indeed. But what I was speaking of happened a long time ago—twenty-five or twenty-six years ago, at the very least. I was still in my own part of the country—at Besancon. No one knows the exact truth about the affair.”
“What! not even you?”
“Oh! I—that’s an entirely different thing. When I entered the count’s service, six years later, there was still an old gardener who knew the whole story, and who told it to me, making me swear that I would never betray his confidence.”
Lavish of details as she had been in telling her own story, it was evident that she was determined to exercise a prudent reserve in everything connected with the De Chalusse family; and M. Fortunat inwardly cursed this, to him, most unseasonable discretion. But he was experienced in these examinations, and he had at his command little tricks for loosening tongues, which even an investigating magistrate might have envied. Without seeming to attach the slightest importance to Madame Vantrasson’s narrative, he rose with a startled air, like a man who suddenly realizes that he has forgotten himself. “Zounds!” he exclaimed, “we sit here gossiping, and it’s growing late. I really can’t wait for your husband. If I remain here any longer, I shall miss the last omnibus; and I live on the other side of the river, near the Luxembourg.”
“But our agreement, monsieur?”
“We will draw that up at some future time. I shall be passing again, or I will send one of my colleagues to see you.”
It was Madame Vantrasson’s turn to tremble now. She feared, if she allowed this supposed clerk to go without signing the agreement, that the person who came in his stead might not prove so accommodating; and even if he called again himself, he might not be so kindly disposed. “Wait just a moment longer, monsieur,” she pleaded; “my husband will soon be back, and the last omnibus doesn’t leave the Rue de Levis until midnight.”
“I wouldn’t refuse, but this part of the suburbs is so lonely.”
“Vantrasson will see you on your way.” And, resolved to detain him at any cost, she poured out a fresh glass of liquor for him, and said: “Where were we? Oh, yes! I was about to tell you Mademoiselle Hermine’s story.”
Concealing his delight with an assumed air of resignation, M. Fortunat reseated himself, to the intense disgust of Chupin, who was thoroughly tired of waiting outside in the cold.
“I must tell you,” began Madame Vantrasson, “that when this happened—at least twenty-five years ago—the De Chalusse family lived in the Rue Saint-Dominique. They occupied a superb mansion, with extensive grounds, full of splendid trees like those in the Tuileries gardens. Mademoiselle Hermine, who was then about eighteen or nineteen years old, was, according to all accounts, the prettiest young creature ever seen. Her skin was as white as milk, she had a profusion of golden hair, and her eyes were as blue as forget-me-nots. She was very kind and generous, they say, only, like all the rest of the family, she was very haughty and obstinate—oh, obstinate enough to allow herself to be roasted alive over a slow fire rather than yield an inch. That’s the count’s nature exactly. Having served him, I know something about it, to be sure, and——”
“Excuse me,” interrupted M. Fortunat, who was determined to prevent these digressions, “and Mademoiselle Hermine?”
“I