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household, together with the gardeners and the concierge and his wife,
were going and coming in a confusion that may readily be imagined. The

master had fallen upon his own house like a bombshell.
From the top of the hill near La Cave, where he left the coach, the

count had gone, by the path through the woods well-known to him, to
the house of his gamekeeper. The keeper was amazed when he saw his

real master.
"Is Moreau here?" said the count. "I see his horse."

"No, monseigneur; he means to go to Moulineaux before dinner, and he
has left his horse here while he went to the chateau to give a few

orders."
"If you value your place," said the count, "you will take that horse

and ride at once to Beaumont, where you will deliver to Monsieur
Margueron the note that I shall now write."

So saying the count entered the keeper's lodge and wrote a line,
folding it in a way impossible to open without detection, and gave it

to the man as soon as he saw him in the saddle.
"Not a word to any one," he said, "and as for you, madame," he added

to the gamekeeper's wife, "if Moreau comes back for his horse, tell
him merely that I have taken it."

The count then crossed the park and entered the court-yard of the
chateau through the iron gates. However worn-out a man may be by the

wear and tear of public life, by his own emotions, by his own mistakes
and disappointments, the soul of any man able to love deeply at the

count's age is still young and sensitive to treachery. Monsieur de
Serizy had felt such pain at the thought that Moreau had deceived him,

that even after hearing the conversation at Saint-Brice he thought him
less an accomplice of Leger and the notary than their tool. On the

threshold of the inn, and while that conversation was still going on,
he thought of pardoning his steward after giving him a good reproof.

Strange to say, the dishonesty of his confidential agent occupied his
mind as a mere episode from the moment when Oscar revealed his

infirmities. Secrets so carefully guarded could only have been
revealed by Moreau, who had, no doubt, laughed over the hidden

troubles of his benefactor with either Madame de Serizy's former maid
or with the Aspasia of the Directory.

As he walked along the wood-path, this peer of France, this statesman,
wept as young men weep; he wept his last tears. All human feelings

were so cruelly hurt by one stroke that the usually calm man staggered
through his park like a wounded deer.

When Moreau arrived at the gamekeeper's lodge and asked for his horse,
the keeper's wife replied:--

"Monsieur le comte has just taken it."
"Monsieur le comte!" cried Moreau. "Whom do you mean?"

"Why, the Comte de Serizy, our master," she replied. "He is probably
at the chateau by this time," she added, anxious to be rid of the

steward, who, unable to understand the meaning of her words, turned
back towards the chateau.

But he presently turned again and came back to the lodge, intending to
question the woman more closely; for he began to see something serious

in this secret arrival, and the apparently strange method of his
master's return. But the wife of the gamekeeper, alarmed to find

herself caught in a vise between the count and his steward, had locked
herself into the house, resolved not to open to any but her husband.

Moreau, more and more uneasy, ran rapidly, in spite of his boots and
spurs, to the chateau, where he was told that the count was dressing.

"Seven persons invited to dinner!" cried Rosalie as soon as she saw
him.

Moreau then went through the offices to his own house. On his way he
met the poultry-girl, who was having an altercation with a handsome

young man.
"Monsieur le comte particularly told me a colonel, an aide-de-camp of

Mina," insisted the girl.
"I am not a colonel," replied Georges.

"But isn't your name Georges?"
"What's all this?" said the steward, intervening.

"Monsieur, my name is Georges Marest; I am the son of a rich wholesale
ironmonger in the rue Saint-Martin; I come on business to Monsieur le

Comte de Serizy from Maitre Crottat, a notary, whose second clerk I
am."

"And I," said the girl, "am telling him that monseigneur said to me:
'There'll come a colonel named Czerni-Georges, aide-de-camp to Mina;

he'll come by Pierrotin's coach; if he asks for me show him into the
waiting-room.'"

"Evidently," said the clerk, "the count is a traveller who came down
with us in Pierrotin's coucou; if it hadn't been for the politeness of

a young man he'd have come as a rabbit."
"A rabbit! in Pierrotin's coucou!" exclaimed Moreau and the poultry-

girl together.
"I am sure of it, from what this girl is now saying," said Georges.

"How so?" asked the steward.
"Ah! that's the point," cried the clerk. "To hoax the travellers and

have a bit of fun I told them a lot of stuff about Egypt and Greece
and Spain. As I happened to be wearing spurs I have myself out for a

colonel of cavalry: pure nonsense!"
"Tell me," said Moreau, "what did this traveller you take to be

Monsieur le comte look like?"
"Face like a brick," said Georges, "hair snow-white, and black

eyebrows."
"That is he!"

"Then I'm lost!" exclaimed Georges.
"Why?"

"Oh, I chaffed him about his decorations."
"Pooh! he's a good fellow; you probably amused him. Come at once to

the chateau. I'll go in and see his Excellency. Where did you say he
left the coach?"

"At the top of the mountain."
"I don't know what to make of it!"

"After all," thought Georges, "though I did blague him, I didn't say
anything insulting."

"Why have you come here?" asked the steward.
"I have brought the deed of sale for the farm at Moulineaux, all ready

for signature."
"Good heavens!" exclaimed the steward, "I don't understand one word of

all this!"
Moreau felt his heart beat painfully when, after giving two raps on

his master's door, he heard the words:--
"Is that you, MONSIEUR Moreau?"

"Yes, monseigneur."
"Come in."

The count was now wearing a pair of white trousers and thin boots, a
white waistcoat and a black coat on which shone the grand cross of the

Legion upon the right breast, and fastened to a buttonhole on the left
was the order of the Golden Fleece hanging by a short gold chain. He

had arranged his hair himself, and had, no doubt, put himself in full
dress to do the honors of Presles to Monsieur Margueron; and,

possibly, to impress the good man's mind with a prestige of grandeur.
"Well, monsieur," said the count, who remained seated, leaving Moreau

to stand before him. "We have not concluded that purchase from
Margueron."

"He asks too much for the farm at the present moment."
"But why is he not coming to dinner as I requested?"

"Monseigneur, he is ill."
"Are you sure?"

"I have just come from there."
"Monsieur," said the count, with a stern air which was really

terrible, "what would you do with a man whom you trusted, if, after
seeing you dress wounds which you desired to keep secret from all the

world, he should reveal your misfortunes and laugh at your malady with
a strumpet?"

"I would thrash him for it."
"And if you discovered that he was also betraying your confidence and

robbing you?"
"I should endeavor to detect him, and send him to the galleys."

"Monsieur Moreau, listen to me. You have undoubtedlyspoken of my
infirmities to Madame Clapart; you have laughed at her house, and with

her, over my attachment to the Comtesse de Serizy; for her son, little
Husson, told a number of circumstances relating to my medical

treatment, to travellers by a public conveyance in my presence, and
Heaven knows in what language! He dared to calumniate my wife. Besides

this, I learned from the lips of Pere Leger himself, who was in the
coach, of the plan laid by the notary at Beaumont and by you and by

himself in relation to Les Moulineaux. If you have been, as you say,
to Monsieur Margueron, it was to tell him to feign illness. He is so

little ill that he is coming here to dinner this evening. Now,
monsieur, I could pardon you having made two hundred and fifty

thousand francs out of your situation in seventeen years,--I can
understand that. You might each time have asked me for what you took,

and I would have given it to you; but let that pass. You have been,
notwithstanding this disloyalty, better than others, as I believe. But

that you, who knew my toil for our country, for France, you have seen
me giving night after night to the Emperor's service, and working

eighteen hours of each twenty-four for months together, you who knew
my love for Madame de Serizy,--that you should have gossiped about me

before a boy! holding up my secrets and my affections to the ridicule
of a Madame Husson!--"

"Monseigneur!"
"It is unpardonable. To injure a man's interest, why, that is nothing;

but to stab his heart!--Oh! you do not know what you have done!"
The count put his head in his hands and was silent for some moments.

"I leave you what you have gained," he said after a time, "and I shall
forget you. For my sake, for my dignity, and for your honor, we will

part decently; for I cannot but remember even now what your father did
for mine. You will explain the duties of the stewardship in a proper

manner to Monsieur de Reybert, who succeeds you. Be calm, as I am.
Give no opportunity for fools to talk. Above all, let there be no

recrimination or petty meanness. Though you no longer possess my
confidence, endeavor to behave with the decorum of well-bred persons.

As for that miserable boy who has wounded me to death, I will not have
him sleep at Presles; send him to the inn; I will not answer for my

own temper if I see him."
"I do not deserve such gentleness, monseigneur," said Moreau, with

tears in his eyes. "Yes, you are right; if I had been utterly
dishonest I should now be worth five hundred thousand francs instead

of half that sum. I offer to give you an account of my fortune, with
all its details. But let me tell you, monseigneur, that in talking of

you with Madame Clapart, it was never in derision; but, on the
contrary, to deplore your state, and to ask her for certain remedies,

not used by physicians, but known to the common people. I spoke of
your feelings before the boy, who was in his bed and, as I supposed,

asleep (it seems he must have been awake and listening to us), with
the utmostaffection and respect. Alas! fate wills that indiscretions

be punished like crimes. But while accepting the results of your just
anger, I wish you to know what actually took place. It was, indeed,

from heart to heart that I spoke of you to Madame Clapart. As for my
wife, I have never said one word of these things--"

"Enough," said the count, whose conviction was now complete; "we are
not children. All is now irrevocable. Put your affairs and mine in

order. You can stay in the pavilion until October. Monsieur and Madame
de Reybert will lodge for the present in the chateau; endeavor to keep

on terms with them, like well-bred persons who hate each other, but
still keep up appearances."

The count and Moreau went downstairs; Moreau white as the count's
hair, the count himself calm and dignified.

During the time this interview lasted the Beaumont coach, which left
Paris at one o'clock, had stopped before the gates of the chateau, and

deposited Maitre Crottat, the notary, who was shown, according to the
count's orders, into the salon, where he found his clerk, extremely

subdued in manner, and the two painters, all three of them painfully
self-conscious and embarrassed. Monsieur de Reybert, a man of fifty,

with a crabbed expression of face, was also there, accompanied by old


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