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 game
keeper. 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 game
keeper'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 game
keeper'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 game
keeper, 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 un
pardonable. 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
painfullyself-conscious and embarrassed. Monsieur de Reybert, a man of fifty,
with a crabbed expression of face, was also there, accompanied by old