M. Fortunat had scarcely started off on his visit to the Vantrassons
when the Marquis de Valorsay reached the Place de la Bourse.
“Monsieur has gone out,” said Madame Dodelin, as she opened the door.
“You must be mistaken, my good woman.”
“No, no; my master said you would, perhaps, wait for him.”
“Very well; I will do so.”
Faithful to the orders she had received, the servant conducted the
visitor to the drawing-room, lit the tapers in the candelabra, and
retired. “This is very strange!” growled the marquis. “Monsieur Fortunat
makes an appointment, Monsieur Fortunat expects me to wait for him! What
will happen next?” However, he drew a newspaper from his pocket, threw
himself into an arm-chair, and waited.
By his habits and tastes, the Marquis de Valorsay belonged to that
section of the aristocracy which has coined the term “high life” in view
of describing its own manners and customs. The matters that engrossed
the marquis’s frivolous mind were club-life and first performances at
the opera and the leading theatres, social duties and visits to the
fashionable watering-places, racing and the shooting and hunting
seasons, together with his mistress and his tailor.
He considered that to ride in a steeple-chase was an act of prowess
worthy of his ancestors; and when he galloped past the stand, clad as
a jockey, in top-boots and a violet silk jacket, he believed he read
admiration in every eye. This was his every-day life, which had been
enlivened by a few salient episodes: two duels, an elopement with a
married woman, a twenty-six hours’ seance at the gaming table, and a
fall from his horse, while hunting, which nearly cost him his life.
These acts of valor had raised him considerably in the estimation of
his friends, and procured him a celebrity of which he was not a little
proud. The newspaper reporters were constantly mentioning his name, and
the sporting journals never failed to chronicle his departure from Paris
or his arrival in the city.
Unfortunately, such a life of busy idleness has its trials and its
vicissitudes, and M. de Valorsay was a living proof of this. He was only
thirty-three, but in spite of the care he expended upon his toilette,
he looked at least forty. Wrinkles were beginning to show themselves;
it required all the skill of his valet to conceal the bald spots on his
cranium; and since his fall from his horse, he had been troubled by
a slight stiffness in his right leg, which stiffness became perfect
lameness in threatening weather. Premature lassitude pervaded his
entire person, and when he relaxed in vigilance even his eyes betrayed
a distaste for everything--weariness, satiety as it were. All the same,
however, he bore himself with an undeniable air of distinction, albeit
the haughtiness of his manner indicated an exaggerated idea of his own
importance. He was indeed in the habit of treating all those whom he
considered his inferiors with supercilious sufficiency.
The clock on M. Fortunat’s mantel-shelf struck eleven at last and the
marquis rose to his feet with a muttered oath. “This is too much!” he
growled, angrily.
He looked about for a bell, and seeing none, he was reduced to the dire
necessity of opening the door himself, and calling some one. Madame
Dodelin answered the summons. “Monsieur said he would return before
midnight,” she replied; “so he will certainly be here. There is no one
like him for punctuality. Won’t monsieur have patience a little longer?”
“Well, I will wait a few moments; but, my good woman, light the fire; my
feet are frozen!”
M. Fortunat’s drawing-room being used but seldom, was really as frigid
as an iceberg; and to make matters still worse, M. de Valorsay was in
evening dress, with only a light overcoat. The servant hesitated for an
instant, thinking this visitor difficult to please, and inclined to make
himself very much at home, still she obeyed.
“I think I ought to go,” muttered the marquis. “I really think I
ought to go.” And yet he remained. Necessity, it should be remembered,
effectually quiets the revolts of pride.
Left an orphan in his early childhood, placed in possession of an
immense fortune at the age of twenty-three, M. de Valorsay had entered
life like a famished man enters a dining-room. His name entitled him to
a high position in the social world; and he installed himself at table
without asking how much the banquet might cost him. It cost him dear,
as he discovered at the end of the first year, on noting that his
disbursements had considerably exceeded his large income. It was very
evident that if he went on in this way, each twelvemonth would deepen
an abyss where in the one hundred and sixty thousand francs a year, left
him by his father, would finally be swallowed up. But he had plenty of
time to reflect upon this unpleasant possibility ere it could come to
pass! And, besides, he found his present life so delightful, and he
obtained so much gratification for his money, that he was unwilling to
make any change. He possessed several fine estates, and he found plenty
of men who were only too glad to lend him money on such excellent
security. He borrowed timidly at first, but more boldly when he
discovered what a mere trifle a mortgage is. Moreover, his wants
increased in proportion to his vanity. Occupying a certain position in
the opinion of his acquaintances, he did not wish to descend from the
heights to which they had exalted him; and the very fact that he had
been foolishly extravagant one year made it necessary for him to be
guilty of similar folly during the succeeding twelvemonth. He failed to
pay his creditors the interest that was due on his loans. They did not
ask him for it; and perhaps he forgot that it was slowly but surely
accumulating, and that at the end of a certain number of years the
amount of his indebtedness would be doubled. He never thought what the
end would be. He became absolutely ignorant of the condition of his
affairs, and really arrived at the conclusion that his resources were
inexhaustible. He believed this until one day when on going to his
lawyer for some money, that gentleman coldly said: “You requested me to
obtain one hundred thousand francs for you, Monsieur le Marquis--but I
have only been able to procure fifty thousand--here they are. And do not
hope for more. All your real estate is encumbered beyond its value. Your
creditors will probably leave you in undisturbed possession for another
year--it will be to their interest--but when it has elapsed they will
take possession of their own, as they have a perfect right to do.” Then,
with a meaning smile, the smile of a wily prime minister, he added: “If
I were in your place, Monsieur le Marquis, I would profit by this year
of grace. You undoubtedly understand what I mean. I have the honor to
wish you good-morning.”
What an awakening--after a glorious dream that had lasted for ten years.
M. de Valorsay was stunned--crushed. For three days he remained immured
in his own room, obstinately refusing to receive any one. “The marquis
is ill,” was his valet’s answer to every visitor.
M. de Valorsay felt that he must have time to regain his mental
equilibrium--to look his situation calmly in the face. It was a
frightful one, for his ruin was complete, absolute. He could save
nothing from the wreck. What was to become of him? What could he do? He
set his wits to work; but he found that he was incapable of plying any
kind of avocation. All the energy he had been endowed with by nature had
been squandered--exhausted in pandering to his self-conceit. If he had
been younger he might have turned soldier; but at his age he had not
even this resource. Then it was that his notary’s smile recurred to
his mind. “His advice was decidedly good,” he muttered. “All is not yet
lost; one way of escape still remains--marriage.”
And why, indeed, shouldn’t he marry, and marry a rich wife too? No one
knew anything about his misfortune; for a year at least, he would retain
all the advantages that wealth bestows upon its possessor. His name
alone was a great advantage. It would be very strange if he could not
find some manufacturer’s or banker’s daughter who would be only too
delighted to have a marquisial coronet emblazoned on her carriage
panels.
Having arrived at this conclusion, M. de Valorsay began his search, and
it was not long before he thought he had found what he was seeking.
But something was still necessary. The bestowers of large dowers are
inclined to be suspicious; they like to have a clear understanding as to
the financial position of the suitors who present themselves, and they
not unfrequently ask for information. Accordingly, before committing
himself, M. de Valorsay understood that it was necessary he should
provide himself with an intelligent and devoted adviser. There must be
some one to hold his creditors in check, to silence them, and obtain
sundry concessions from them--in a word, some one to interest them in
his success. With this object in view, M. de Valorsay applied to his
notary; but the latter utterly refused to mix himself up in any such
affair, and declared that the marquis’s suggestion was almost an insult.
Then touched, perhaps, by his client’s apparent despair, he said, “But
I can mention a person who might be of service to you. Go to M. Isidore
Fortunat, No. 27 Place de la Bourse. If you succeed in interesting him
in your marriage, it is an accomplished fact.”
It was under these circumstances that the marquis became acquainted with
M. Fortunat. M. de Valorsay was a man of no little penetration, and on
his first visit he carefully weighed his new acquaintance. He found
him to be the very counsellor he desired--prudent, and at the same
time courageous; fertile in expedients; a thorough master of the art
of evading the law, and not at all troubled by scruples. With such
an adviser, it would be mere child’s play to conceal his financial
embarrassments and deceive the most suspicious father-in-law. So M. de
Valorsay did not hesitate a moment. He frankly disclosed his pecuniary
condition and his matrimonial hopes, and concluded by promising M.
Fortunat a certain percentage on the bride’s dowry, to be paid on the
day following the marriage.
After a prolonged conference, the agreement was drawn up and signed,
and that very day M. Fortunat took the nobleman’s interests in hand. How
heartily, and with what confidence in his success, is shown by the fact
that he had advanced forty thousand francs for his client’s use, out
of his own private purse. After such a proof of confidence the marquis
could hardly have been dissatisfied with his adviser; in point of fact,
he was delighted with him, and all the more so, as this invaluable man
always treated him with extreme deference, verging on servility. And
in M. de Valorsay’s eyes this was a great consideration; for he was
becoming more arrogant and more irascible in proportion as his right to
be so diminished. Secretly disgusted with himself, and deeply humiliated
by the shameful intrigue to which he had stooped, he took a secret
satisfaction in crushing his accomplice with his imaginary superiority
and lordly disdain. According as his humor was good or bad, he
called him “my dear extortioner,” “Mons. Fortunat,” or “Master
Twenty-per-cent.” But though these sneers and insults drove the
obsequious smile from M. Fortunat’s lips, he was quite capable of
including them in the bill under the head of sundries.
The unvarying deference and submission which M. de Valorsay’s adviser
displayed made his failure to keep the present appointment all the
more remarkable. Such neglect of the commonest rules of courtesy was
inconceivable on the part of so polite a man; and the marquis’s anger
gradually changed to anxiety. “What can have happened?” he thought.
He was trying to decide whether he should leave or stay, when he heard a
key grate in the lock of the outer door, and then some quick steps
along the ante-room. “At last--here he is!” he muttered, with a sigh of
relief.
He expected to see M. Fortunat enter the room at once, but he was
disappointed. The agent had no desire to show himself in the garb which
he had assumed for his excursion with Chupin; and so he had hastened to
his room to don his wonted habiliments. He also desired a few moments
for deliberation.
If--as was most probably the case--M. de Valorsay were ignorant of the
Count de Chalusse’s critical condition, was it advisable to tell him of
it? M. Fortunat thought not, judging with reason that this would lead
to a discussion and very possibly to a rupture, and he wished to avoid
anything of the kind until he was quite certain of the count’s death.
Meanwhile the marquis was thinking--he was a trifle late about it--that
he had done wrong to wait in that drawing-room for three mortal hours.
Was such conduct worthy of him? Had he shown himself proper respect?
Would not M. Fortunat construe this as an acknowledgment of the
importance of his services and his client’s urgent need? Would he not
become more exacting, more exorbitant in his demands? If the marquis
could have made his escape unheard, he would, no doubt, have done so;
but this was out of the question. So he resorted to a stratagem which
seemed to him likely to save his compromised dignity. He stretched
himself out in his arm-chair, closed his eyes, and pretended to doze.
Then, when M. Fortunat at last entered the drawing-room he sprang up
as if he were suddenly aroused from slumber, rubbed his eyes, and
exclaimed: “Eh! what’s that? Upon my word I must have been asleep!”
But M. Fortunat was not deceived. He noticed, on the floor, a torn and
crumpled newspaper, which betrayed the impatience and anger his client
had experienced during his long waiting. “Well,” resumed the marquis,
“what time is it? Half-past twelve? This is a pretty time to keep an
appointment fixed for ten o’clock. This is presuming on my good-nature,
M. Fortunat! Do you know that my carriage has been waiting below ever
since half-past nine, and that my horses have, perhaps, taken cold? A
pair of horses worth six hundred louis!”
M. Fortunat listened to these reproaches with the deepest humility. “You
must excuse me, Monsieur le Marquis,” said he. “If I remained out so
much later than usual, it was only because your business interests
detained me.”
“Zounds! that is about the same as if it had been your own business that
detained you!” And well pleased with this joke, he added, “Ah well! How
are affairs progressing?”
“On my side as well as could be desired.”
The marquis had resumed his seat in the chimney-corner, and was poking
the fire with a haughty, but poorly assumed air of indifference. “I am
listening,” he said carelessly.
“In that case, Monsieur le Marquis, I will state the facts in a few
words, without going into particulars. Thanks to an expedient devised
by me, we shall obtain for twenty hours a release from all the mortgages
that now encumber your estates. On that very day we will request a
certificate from the recorder. This certificate will declare that your
estates are free from all encumbrances; you will show this statement to
M. de Chalusse, and all his doubts--that is, if he has any--will vanish.
The plan was very simple; the only difficulty was about raising the
money, but I have succeeded in doing so. All your creditors but two lent
themselves very readily to the arrangement. I have now won the consent
of the two who at first refused, but we shall have to pay dearly for it.
It will cost you about twenty-six thousand francs.”
M. de Valorsay was so delighted that he could not refrain from clapping
his hands. “Then the affair is virtually concluded,” he exclaimed.
“In less than a month Mademoiselle Marguerite will be the Marquise de
Valorsay, and I shall have a hundred thousand francs a year again.”
Then, noting how gravely M. Fortunat shook his head: “Ah! so you doubt
it!” he cried. “Very well; now it is your turn to listen. Yesterday I
had a long conference with the Count de Chalusse, and everything has
been settled. We exchanged our word of honor, Master Twenty-per-cent.
The count does things in a princely fashion; he gives Mademoiselle
Marguerite two millions.”
“Two millions!” the other repeated like an echo.
“Yes, my dear miser, neither more nor less. Only for private reasons,
which he did not explain, the count stipulates that only two hundred
thousand francs shall appear in the marriage contract. The remaining
eighteen hundred thousand francs, he gives to me unreservedly and
unconditionally. Upon my word, I think this very charming. How does it
strike you?”
M. Fortunat made no reply. M. de Valorsay’s gayety, instead of cheering,
saddened him. “Ah! my fine fellow,” he thought, “you would sing a
different song if you knew that by this time M. de Chalusse is probably
dead, and that most likely Mademoiselle Marguerite has only her
beautiful eyes left her, and will dim them in weeping for her vanished
millions.”
But this brilliant scion of the aristocracy had no suspicion of the
real state of affairs, for he continued: “You will say, perhaps, it is
strange, that I, Ange-Marie Robert Dalbou, Marquis de Valorsay, should
marry a girl whose father and mother no one knows, and whose only name
is Marguerite. In this respect it is true that the match is not exactly
a brilliant one. Still, as it will appear that she merely has a fortune
of two hundred thousand francs, no one will accuse me of marrying for
money on the strength of my name. On the contrary, it will seem to be a
love-match, and people will suppose that I have grown young again.” He
paused, incensed by M. Fortunat’s lack of enthusiasm. “Judging from
your long face, Master Twenty-per-cent, one would fancy you doubted my
success,” he said.
“It is always best to doubt,” replied his adviser, philosophically.
The marquis shrugged his shoulders. “Even when one has triumphed over
all obstacles?” he asked sneeringly.
“Yes.”
“Then, tell me, if you please, what prevents this marriage from being a
foregone conclusion?”
“Mademoiselle Marguerite’s consent, Monsieur le Marquis.”
It was as if a glass of ice-water had been thrown in M. de Valorsay’s
face. He started, turned as pale as death, and then exclaimed: “I shall
have that; I am sure of it.”
You could not say that M. Fortunat was angry. Such a man, as cold and
as smooth as a hundred franc piece, has no useless passions. But he was
intensely irritated to hear his client foolishly chanting the paeons of
victory, while he was compelled to conceal his grief at the loss of his
forty thousand francs, deep in the recesses of his heart. So, far from
being touched by the marquis’s evident alarm, it pleased him to be able
to turn the dagger in the wound he had just inflicted. “You must
excuse my incredulity,” said he. “It comes entirely from something you,
yourself, told me about a week ago.”
“What did I tell you?”
“That you suspected Mademoiselle Marguerite of a--how shall I express
it?--of a secret preference for some other person.”
The gloomiest despondency had now followed the marquis’s enthusiasm and
exultation. He was evidently in torture. “I more than suspected it,”
said he.
“Ah!”
“I was certain of it, thanks to the count’s house-keeper, Madame Leon,
a miserable old woman whom I have hired to look after my interests. She
has been watching Mademoiselle Marguerite, and saw a letter written by
her----”
“Oh!”
“Certainly nothing has passed that Mademoiselle Marguerite has any
cause to blush for. The letter, which is now in my possession, contains
unmistakable proofs of that. She might proudly avow the love she has
inspired, and which she undoubtedly returns. Yet----”
M. Fortunat’s gaze was so intent that it became unbearable. “You see,
then,” he began, “that I had good cause to fear.”
Exasperated beyond endurance, M. de Valorsay sprang up so violently that
he overturned his chair. “No!” he exclaimed, “no, a thousand times no!
You are wrong--for the man who loves Mademoiselle Marguerite is now
ruined. Yes, such is really the case. While we are sitting here, at this
very moment, he is lost--irredeemably lost. Between him and the woman
whom I wish to marry--whom I SHALL marry--I have dug so broad and deep
an abyss that the strongest love cannot overleap it. It is better
and worse than if I had killed him. Dead, he would have been mourned,
perhaps; while now, the lowest and most degraded woman would turn from
him in disgust, or, even if she loved him, she would not dare to confess
it.”
M. Fortunat seemed greatly disturbed. “Have you then put into execution
the project--the plan you spoke of?” he faltered. “I thought you were
only jesting.”
The marquis lowered his head. “Yes,” he answered.
His companion stood for a moment as if petrified, and then suddenly
exclaimed: “What! You have done that--you--a gentleman?”
M. de Valorsay paced the floor in a state of intense agitation. Had he
caught a glimpse of his own face in the looking-glass, it would have
frightened him. “A gentleman!” he repeated, in a tone of suppressed
rage; “a gentleman! That word is in everybody’s mouth, nowadays. Pray,
what do you understand by a gentleman, Mons. Fortunat? No doubt, you
mean a heroic idiot who passed through life with a lofty mien, clad in
all the virtues, as stoical as Job, and as resigned as a martyr--a sort
of moral Don Quixote, preaching the austerest virtue, and practising
it? But, unfortunately, nobility of soul and of purpose are expensive
luxuries, and I am a ruined man. I am no saint! I love life and all that
makes life beautiful and desirable--and to procure its pleasures I must
fight with the weapons of the age. No doubt, it is grand to be honest;
but in my case it is so impossible, that I prefer to be dishonest--to
commit an act of shameful infamy which will yield a hundred thousand
francs a year. This man is in my way--I suppress him--so much the worse
for him--he has no business to be in my way. If I could have met him
openly, I would have dispatched him according to the accepted code of
honor; but, then, I should have had to renounce all idea of marrying
Mademoiselle Marguerite, so I was obliged to find some other way. I
could not choose my means. The drowning man does not reject the plank,
which is his only chance of salvation, because it chances to be dirty.”
His gestures were even more forcible than his words; and when he
concluded, he threw himself on to the sofa, holding his head tightly
between his hands, as if he felt that it was bursting. Anger choked
his utterance--not anger so much as something he would not confess,
the quickening of his own conscience and the revolt of every honorable
instinct; for, in spite of his sins of omission, and of commission,
never, until this day, had he actually violated any clause of the code
acknowledged by men of honor.
“You have been guilty of a most infamous act, Monsieur le Marquis,” said
M. Fortunat, coldly.
“Oh! no moralizing, if you please.”
“Only evil will come of it.”
The marquis shrugged his shoulders, and in a tone of bitter scorn,
retorted: “Come, Mons. Fortunat, if you wish to lose the forty thousand
francs you advanced to me, it’s easy enough to do so. Run to Madame
d’Argeles’s house, ask for M. de Coralth, and tell him I countermand my
order. My rival will be saved, and will marry Mademoiselle Marguerite
and her millions.”
M. Fortunat remained silent. He could not tell the marquis: “My
forty thousand francs are lost already. I know that only too well.
Mademoiselle Marguerite is no longer the possessor of millions, and you
have committed a useless crime.” However, it was this conviction which
imparted such an accent of eagerness to his words as he continued to
plead the cause of virtue and of honesty. Would he have said as much
if he had entertained any great hope of the success of the marquis’s
matrimonial enterprise? It is doubtful, still we must do M. Fortunat the
justice to admit that he was really and sincerely horrified by what he
had unhesitatingly styled an “infamous act.”
The marquis listened to his agent for a few moments in silence, and then
rose to his feet again. “All this is very true,” he interrupted; “but
I am, nevertheless, anxious to learn the result of my little plot. For
this reason, Monsieur Fortunat, give me at once the five hundred louis
you promised me, and I will then bid you good-evening.”
The agent had been preparing himself for this moment, and yet he
trembled. “I am deeply grieved, monsieur,” he replied, with a doleful
smile; “it was this matter that kept me out so much later than usual
this evening. I hoped to have obtained the money from a banker, who
has always accommodated me before--M. Prosper Bertomy, you know him: he
married M. Andre Fauvel’s niece----”
“Yes, I know; proceed, if you please.”
“Ah, well! it was impossible for me to procure the money.”
The marquis had hitherto been pale, but now his face flushed crimson.
“This is a jest, I suppose,” said he.
“Alas!--unfortunately--no.”
There was a moment’s silence, which the marquis probably spent in
reflecting upon the probable consequences of this disappointment, for
it was in an almost threatening tone that he eventually exclaimed: “You
know that I must have this money at once--that I must have it.”
M. Fortunat would certainly have preferred to lose a good pound of flesh
rather than the sum of money mentioned; but, on the other hand, he felt
that it would not do for him to sever his connection with his client
until the death of the Count de Chalusse was certain; and being anxious
to save his money and to keep his client, his embarrassment was extreme.
“It was the most unfortunate thing in the world,” he stammered; “I
apprehended no difficulty whatever--” Then, suddenly clapping his hand
to his forehead, he exclaimed: “But, Monsieur le Marquis, couldn’t you
borrow this amount from one of your friends, the Duke de Champdoce or
the Count de Commarin?--that would be a good idea.”
M. de Valorsay was anything but unsophisticated, and his natural
shrewdness had been rendered much more acute by the difficulties with
which he had recently been obliged to contend. M. Fortunat’s confusion
had not escaped his keen glance; and this last suggestion aroused his
suspicions at once. “What!” he said, slowly, and with an air of evident
distrust. “YOU give me this advice, Master Twenty-per-cent. This is
wonderful! How long is it since your opinions have undergone such a
change?”
“My opinions?”
“Yes. Didn’t you say to me during our first interview; ‘The thing that
will save you, is that you have never in your whole life borrowed
a louis from a friend. An ordinary creditor only thinks of a large
interest; and if that is paid him he holds his peace. A friend is never
satisfied until everybody knows that he has generously obliged you. It
is far better to apply to a usurer.’ I thought all that very sensible,
and I quite agreed with you when you added: ‘So, Monsieur le Marquis,
no borrowing of this kind until after your marriage--not on any pretext
whatever. Go without eating rather than do it. Your credit is still
good; but it is being slowly undermined--and the indiscretion of a
friend who chanced to say: “I think Valorsay is hard up,” might fire the
train, and then you’d explode.’”
M. Fortunat’s embarrassment was really painful to witness. He was not
usually wanting in courage, but the events of the evening had shaken his
confidence and his composure. The hope of gain and the fear of loss had
deprived him of his wonted clearness of mind. Feeling that he had just
committed a terrible blunder, he racked his brain to find some way of
repairing it, and finding none, his confusion increased.
“Did you, or didn’t you, use that language?” insisted M. de Valorsay.
“What have you to say in reply?”
“Circumstances----”
“What circumstances?”
“Urgent need--necessity. There is no rule without its exceptions. I did
not imagine you would be so rash. I have advanced you forty thousand
francs in less than five months--it is outrageous. If I were in your
place, I would be more reasonable--I would economize----”
He paused! in fact, he was compelled to pause by the piercing glance
which M. de Valorsay turned upon him. He was furious with himself. “I am
losing my wits,” he thought.
“Still more wise counsel,” remarked the ruined nobleman ironically.
“While you are about it, why don’t you advise me to sell my horses and
carriages, and establish myself in a garret in the Rue Amelot? Such a
course would seem very natural, wouldn’t it? and, of course, it would
inspire M. de Chalusse with boundless confidence!”
“But without going to such extremes----”
“Hold your tongue!” interrupted the marquis, violently. “Better than any
one else you know that I cannot retrench, although the reality no longer
exists. I am condemned, cost what it may, to keep up appearances. That
is my only hope of salvation. I have gambled, given expensive suppers,
indulged in dissipation of every kind, and I must continue to do so.
I have come to hate Ninette Simplon, for whom I have committed so many
acts of folly, and yet I still keep her--to show that I am rolling in
wealth. I have thrown thousand-franc notes out of the window, and I
mustn’t stop throwing them. Indeed, what would people say if I stopped!
Why, ‘Valorsay is a ruined man!’ Then, farewell to my hopes of marrying
an heiress. And so I am always gay and smiling; that is part of my role.
What would my servants--the twenty spies that I pay--what would they
think if they saw me thoughtful or disturbed? You would scarcely believe
it, M. Fortunat, but I have positively been reduced to dining on credit
at my club, because I had paid, that morning, for a month’s provender
for my horses! It is true I have many valuable articles in my house, but
I cannot dispose of them. People would recognize them at once; besides,
they form a part of my stock-in-trade. An actor doesn’t sell his
costumes because he’s hungry--he goes without food--and when it’s time
for the curtain to rise, he dons his satin and velvet garments, and,
despite his empty stomach, he chants the praises of a bountiful table
and rare old wine. That is what I am doing--I, Robert Dalbou, Marquis
de Valorsay! At the races at Vincennes, about a fortnight ago, I was
bowling along the boulevard behind my four-in-hand, when I heard a
laborer say, ‘How happy those rich people must be!’ Happy, indeed! Why,
I envied him his lot. He was sure that the morrow would be like the
day that preceded it. On that occasion my entire fortune consisted of
a single louis, which I had won at baccarat the evening before. As I
entered the enclosure, Isabelle, the flower-girl, handed me a rose for
my button-hole. I gave her my louis--but I longed to strangle her!”
He paused for a moment, and then, in a frenzy of passion, he advanced
toward M. Fortunat, who instinctively retreated into the protecting
embrasure of a window. “And for eight months I have lived this horrible
life!” he resumed. “For eight months each moment has been so much
torture. Ah! better poverty, prison, and shame! And now, when the prize
is almost won, actuated either by treason or caprice, you try to make
all my toil and all my suffering unavailing. You try to thwart me on the
very threshold of success! No! I swear, by God’s sacred name, it shall
not be! I will rather crush you, you miserable scoundrel--crush you like
a venomous reptile!”
There was such a ring of fury in his voice that the crystals of the
candelabra vibrated; and Madame Dodelin, in her kitchen, heard it, and
shuddered. “Some one will certainly do M. Fortunat an injury one of
these days,” she thought.
It was not by any means the first time that M. Fortunat had found
himself at variance with clients of a sanguine temperament; but he
had always escaped safe and sound, so that, after all, he was not
particularly alarmed in the present instance, as was proved by the fact
that he was still calm enough to reflect and plan. “In forty-eight hours
I shall be certain of the count’s fate,” he thought; “he will be dead,
or he will be in a fair way to recovery--so by promising to give this
frenzied man what he desires on the day after to-morrow, I shall incur
no risk.”
Taking advantage of an opportunity which M. de Valorsay furnished,
on pausing to draw breath, he hastily exclaimed, “Really, Monsieur le
Marquis, I cannot understand your anger.”
“What! scoundrel!”
“Excuse me. Before insulting me, permit me to explain----”
“No explanation--five hundred louis!”
“Have the kindness to allow me to finish. Yes, I know that you are in
urgent need of money--not by-and-by, but now. To-day I was unable
to procure it, nor can I promise it to-morrow; but on the day after
to-morrow, Saturday, I shall certainly have it ready for you.”
The marquis seemed to be trying to read his agent’s very soul. “Are you
in earnest?” he asked. “Show your hand. If you don’t intend to help me
out of my embarrassment, say so.”
“Ah, Monsieur le Marquis, am I not as much interested in your success
as you yourself can be? Have you not received abundant proofs of my
devotion?”
“Then I can rely upon you.”
“Absolutely.” And seeing a lingering doubt in his client’s eyes, M.
Fortunat added, “You have my word of honor!”
The clock struck three. The marquis took his hat and started toward
the door. But M. Fortunat, in whose heart the word scoundrel was still
rankling, stopped him. “Are you going to that lady’s house now? What
is she called? I’ve forgotten her name. Ah, yes, I remember now. Madame
d’Argeles, isn’t she called? It’s at her place, I believe, that the
reputation of Mademoiselle Marguerite’s favored lover is to be ruined.”
The marquis turned angrily. “What do you take me for, Master
Twenty-per-cent?” he rudely asked. “That is one of those things no
well-bred gentleman will do himself. But in Paris people can be found to
do any kind of dirty work, if you are willing to pay them for it.”
“Then how will you know the result?”
“Why, twenty minutes after the affair is over, M. de Coralth will be
at my house. He is there even now, perhaps.” And as this subject was
anything but pleasant, he hastened away, exclaiming, “Get to bed, my
dear extortioner. Au revoir. And, above all, remember your promise.”
“My respects, Monsieur le Marquis.”
But when the door closed, M. Fortunat’s expression immediately changed.
“Ah! you insult me!” he muttered sullenly. “You rob me, and you call
me a scoundrel into the bargain. You shall pay dearly for it, my fine
fellow, no matter what may happen!”