"It is because I did understand, madame, and even better than you suppose, that I am here."
"Indeed!"
"I came, expecting to deal with M. de Thaller alone. I have been compelled, by what has happened, to alter my intentions. It is to you that I must speak first."
Mme. de Thaller continued to manifest the same tranquil assurance; but she stood up. Feeling the approach of the storm, she wished to be up, and ready to meet it.
"You honor me," she said with an ironical smile.
There was, henceforth, no human power capable of turning Marius de Tregars from the object he had in view.
"It is to you I shall speak," he repeated, "because, after you have heard me, you may perhaps judge that it is your interest to join me in endeavoring to obtain from your husband what I ask, what I demand, what I must have."
With an air of surprise marvelously well simulated, if it was not real, the baroness was looking at him.
"My father," he proceeded to say, "the Marquis de Tregars, was once rich: he had several millions. And yet when I had the misfortune of losing him, three years ago, he was so thoroughly ruined, that to relieve the scruples of his honor, and to make his death easier, I gave up to his creditors all I had in the world. What had become of my father's fortune? What filter had been administered to him to induce him to launch into hazardous speculations, - he an old Breton gentleman, full, even to absurdity, of the most obstinate prejudices of the nobility? That's what I wished to ascertain."
"And now, madame, I - have ascertained."
She was a strong-minded woman, the Baroness de Thaller. She had had so many adventures in her life, she had walked on the very edge of so many precipices, concealed so many anxieties, that danger was, as it were, her element, and that, at the decisive moment of an almost desperate game, she could remain smiling like those old gamblers whose face never betrays their terrible emotion at the moment when they risk their last stake. Not a muscle of her face moved; and it was with the most imperturbable calm that she said, "Go on, I am listening: it must be quite interesting."
That was not the way to propitiate M. de Traggers.
He resumed, in a brief and harsh tone, "When my father died, I was young. I did not know then what I have learned since, - that to contribute to insure the impunity of knaves is almost to make one's self their accomplice. And the victim who says nothing and submits, does contribute to it. The honest man, on the contrary, should speak, and point out to others the trap into which he has fallen, that they may avoid it."
The baroness was listening with the air of a person who is compelled by politeness to hear a tiresome story.
"That is a rather gloomy preamble," she said. M. de Tregars took no notice of the interruption.
"At all times," he went on, "my father seemed careless of his affairs: that affectation, he thought, was due to the name he bore.
But his negligence was only apparent. I might mention things of him that would do honor to the most methodical tradesman. He had, for instance, the habit of preserving all the letters of any importance which he received. He left twelve or fifteen boxes full of such. They were carefully classified; and many bore upon their margin a few notes indicating what answer had been made to them."
Half suppressing a yawn, "That is order," said the baroness, "if I know any thing about it."
"At the first moment, determined not to stir up the past, I attached no importance to those letters; and they would certainly have been burnt, but for an old friend of the family, the Count de Villegre, who had them carried to his own house. But later, acting under the influence of circumstances which it would be too long to explain to you, I regretted my apathy; and I thought that I should, perhaps, find in that correspondence something to either dissipate or justify certain suspicions which had occurred to me."
"So that, like a respectful son, you read it?" M. de Tregars bowed ceremoniously.
"I believe," he said, "that to avenge a father of the imposture of which he was the victim during his life, is to render homage to his memory. Yes, madame, I read the whole of that correspondence, and with an interest which you will readily understand. I had already, and without result, examined the contents of several boxes, when in the package marked 1852, a year which my father spent in Paris, certain letters attracted my attention. They were written upon coarse paper, in a very primitive handwriting and wretchedly spelt.
They were signed sometimes Phrasie, sometimes Marquise de Javelle.
Some gave the address, 'Rue des Bergers, No. 3, Paris-Grenelle.'
"Those letters left me no doubt upon what had taken place. My father had met a young working-girl of rare beauty: he had taken a fancy to her; and, as he was tormented by the fear of being loved for his money alone, he had passed himself off for a poor clerk in one of the departments."
"Quite a touching little love-romance," remarked the baroness.
But there was no impertinence that could affect Marius de Tregars' coolness.
"A romance, perhaps," he said, "but in that case a money-romance, not a love-romance. This Phrasie or Marquise de Javelle, announces in one of her letters, that in February, 1853, she has given birth to a daughter, whom she has confided to some relatives of hers in the south, near Toulouse. It was doubtless that event which induced my father to acknowledge who he was. He confesses that he is not a poor clerk, but the Marquis de Tregars, having an income of over a hundred thousand francs. At once the tone of the correspondence changes. The Marquise de Javelle has a stupid time where she lives; the neighbors reproach her with her fault; work spoils her pretty hands. Result: less than two weeks after the birth of her daughter, my father hires for his pretty mistress a lovely apartment, which she occupies under the name of Mme. Devil; she is allowed fifteen hundred francs a month, servants, horses, carriage."
