PAUL BOURGET (continued 5)

So Privat had not written! That was the whole significance, to their former comrade, of the words of the two officers, one so distinguished by nature, the other so simple-hearted, both equally attached to the service and wounded to the quick in their military honor by abominable orders. Later Landri was destined to see very often in his thoughts the sad and honest glance of Despois in its deeply lined mask, and the jovially disgusted lip—if one may say so—of the ruddy-visaged Vigouroux. At the moment there was no place in his heart for sensations of that sort.

His other visits passed off with the same alternations of painful curiosity and comparative—but only momentary—relief.

The anticipation of the interview with M. de Claviers—the third since he had known what he knew—consumed him with too fierce a fever. It increased constantly as the minutes passed that brought him nearer to the time when he would find himself face to face with him. Again, as in the ride at the head of his dragoons to Hugueville-en-Plaine, he seemed to see him and only him—only him on the railway platform, where very few of his friends had the courage to come to bid him adieu; only him in the carriage, where, lulled by the monotonous rumbling of the train, he tried to imagine the words he was about to hear and those that he would say in reply, endlessly and anxiously; only him, finally, in Paris, where, as he stood in Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, before the door of their house, his suffering acquired fresh intensity. He had not crossed the threshold since the day when, coming from Saint-Mihiel by train, he had gone there to dress, before going to Valentine's to ask for her hand. That was the day before Charles Jaubourg's death!

Everything indicated that the manner of life in that seignorial mansion was still as he had always known it. The old concierge saluted him from his doorway with the same deferential and familiar expression. The same stablemen, with the same gestures, were splashing pails of water on the wheels of the same carriages. Garnier, the maître-d'hôtel, whose white hair gave him a powdered aspect, received him with the same ceremony at the top of the steps, when his arrival had been announced by the same bell.

"Is Monsieur le Marquis well?" Landri inquired; and his heart gave a great throb of relief, as on the day before with Despois and Vigouroux, when the servant replied:—

"Why, yes, Monsieur le Comte, very well. Monsieur le Marquis went to Grandchamp yesterday to hunt, with several friends."

"He hunts!" thought the young man. "Then nothing extraordinary is happening! Evidently I was right. He wishes to talk with me about money matters only." And he said, aloud: "Ask him if he can see me about ten o'clock."

This touch of ceremoniousness was no novelty in the relations between the father and son. Although the conventional courtesy which is traditionary in old-fashioned families creates something like embarrassment at certain times, at other times it reveals itself as singularly beneficent in its operation. It ensures anonymity, if necessary, when one is suffering. No one of the household suspected that there was impending between the marquis and Landri one of those scenes which mark a solemn epoch in two lives.

But did Landri himself suspect to what sort of an interview he was proceeding when, at the appointed hour, he went down from his apartment to the library, where M. de Claviers had sent word that he was awaiting him? That large, high-studded room was on the same level with the garden, which was fresh and bright-colored in summer, but so severely bare and leafless on that dark December morning. The gloomy setting was only too appropriate to the words that were to be exchanged there.

The marquis was standing in front of the vast fireplace, with his back to the fire, whose bright flame twined about a veritable tree-trunk. It was another of the old nobleman's manias, that huge fire of the olden time. Standing before that monumental chimneypiece, he was himself at that moment, despite his modern costume, more of an "ancient portrait" than ever. But it was the portrait of one who was living through hours of frightful martyrdom. The master of the hunt of the forest of Hez, whose tall erect figure Landri had so admired in the group of sportsmen watching the kill, was scarcely fifty years of age, despite the sixty-five years that the genealogical tree of the Claviers-Grandchamps gave him. The head of the family, who was at that moment awaiting the heir to his name in the immense room lined with wainscotings and books, was an old man. His ruddy complexion mottled with white spots, his heavy eyelids, the wrinkles on his brow, told the story of the long sleepless nights of those four weeks. The jovial gleam of his deep blue eyes was replaced by an expression of feverish ardor, wherein one could divine his secret agony—at that moment! For the undiminished pride of the whole physiognomy said plainly enough that the nobleman had not surrendered, and that before any other witness he would have found a way to conceal his wound.

What was the wound? To know, Landri had no need to question him. What he had foreseen had happened. M. de Claviers suspected the truth. To what extent? How had he been warned? The young man instinctively collected all his strength, in order to undergo without faltering an interview in which his own secret might escape him. He was about to realize once more the superiority of Race, and what a powerful and resolute character it bestows upon its authentic representatives.

M. de Claviers was infinitely affectionate and sensitive, but he was above all else a man. In him, character was in very truth nourished upon and permeated by those principles upon which he declaimed with a fervor which was sometimes so discordant, even—especially, perhaps—in his own circle. At supremely critical moments he was certain to manifest the energy born of an unchangeable resolution, which scorns equivocation, and which has the unswerving decision of the surgeon's knife. He, too, was unaware exactly how much his son—in name—knew of a situation of which he had never dreamed before he had had overwhelming and indisputable proof of it. He was justified in thinking that the young man was altogether ignorant. That was enough to justify, in a weaker nature, the temptation to hold his peace, which Landri assuredly would not have escaped. In the marquis's eyes one duty overshadowed everything else,—the duty of saving, in this shipwreck of all his confidence and all his affections, so much as he could save of the honor of the Claviers-Grandchamps. He was the depositary of the name, and he proposed to impose his will on the intruder,—justifiably, indeed,—without concern for aught save that honor. And so when the young man, immediately on entering the room, began to speak, alluding to their last interview, he cut him short with a word.

"I did not send for you," he said; and the failure to address him by the familiar tu seemed strangely harsh in his mouth, for never before, since his childhood, had Landri known him to address him thus, even in his sternest moments;—"I did not send for you to resume a discussion which, henceforth, has no interest or even any pretext. Something has happened during the month since we last met. It is destined to change our relations forever, and in every respect. It has seemed to me that I owed it to myself and to you to make it known to you. Prepare to receive a very painful blow, as I received it, bravely."

"I am prepared, father, to receive anything from you," Landri replied, "for I am sure that you will never do anything except for what you believe to be my good."

This ambiguous sentence was a final effort to conceal—to what avail now?—what he on his side had learned. At the word "father" the marquis, firm as he was, could not help closing his eyes for a second. But his voice, full and deep, did not falter as he continued:—

"Look over those two letters first; then we will talk."

With outstretched finger he pointed to an envelope lying on the desk, unsealed. On opening it the young man saw that it did in fact contain two letters. One, type-written, was thus conceived:—

"Monsieur le Marquis de Claviers-Grandchamp doubtless is unaware of the reasons that led one of his friends (?) very recently deceased, to make him his residuary legatee. The accompanying document will enlighten him. If Monsieur le Marquis is not satisfied, we have other documents to furnish him." And this denunciation was signed: "An admirer of the house of Claviers-Grandchamp"!

The other letter—Ah! his recognition of the handwriting stopped the beating of Landri's heart. The paper, slightly yellowed by time, still gave forth a vague, musty sweetness, the faint, evaporated odor of Geneviève de Claviers' favorite perfume,—the perfume that hovered about the kisses of which the child was born who unfolded the sheet with hands that trembled so that he tore it across the middle. It was a love letter, written without precaution, in the perilous sense of security which a long-continued liaison finally imparts even to those who are most closely watched. The first three words,—"My beloved Charles,"—the "tu" that came next—news of "our dear little Landri,"—and other phrases, no less explicit, would have made it impossible for the most obstinate to doubt.

From whom had the letter been stolen? From the lover after he received it? Or had villainous hands intercepted it, hands which the careless mistress deemed faithful? Why had they waited for years before using this formidable weapon, and why was it produced to-day, when the two culprits were protected forever by the tomb against the vengeance of the outraged husband? That the will which made M. de Claviers sole legatee had induced this revolting denunciation, the other letter needed not to assert with such insulting cynicism. It was sufficient evidence in itself. The motive was of little importance. The effect had been produced, as complete as the most implacable animosity could wish.

Landri stood as one stricken dumb before the man whose name he bore, by virtue of the sin of the dead woman who had insanely written those lines with her impassioned fingers. When he ventured at last to raise his eyes, he saw that the marquis pointed to the fire on the hearth. He threw the two papers, laden with deadly meaning, into the flames. A minute later a few charred fragments, whirling about in the smoke, alone testified that those letters had ever existed. Doubtless the young man's face had exhibited an extraordinary poignancy of suffering during that silent scene, for, even at that moment, M. de Claviers could not help pitying him.

"I could not perform the task incumbent upon me," he said, "except with your aid and with you aware of the facts."

"Do not reproach yourself, monsieur," said Landri. "Those letters have told me nothing. I knew it all before."

The blood rushed suddenly to the old man's face, attesting the burst of passion that this unexpected reply aroused in him. His blue eyes flashed fire, and as his former habit of speech returned to his lips in that explosion, he cried:—

"You (tu) knew it all! And you did not speak to me! You knew all, and your conscience didn't say to you: 'That man who brought me up, who has always loved me like the most affectionate of fathers, was betrayed in his conjugal honor! He is betrayed to-day in his probity! He accepts that abominable legacy in good faith! He is grateful for it! He is going to use it to pay his debts, to release his patrimony! His patrimony,'" he repeated. "'At any price I must prevent that!'—You knew all, and you allowed me to go away the other day without uttering the cry that you owed me! Yes, you owed it to me, for what I have given you with all my heart for so many years, for what I was still giving you a few moments ago.—I was just about to apologize to you for not being able to conceal the shameful truth from you! And you betrayed me, you, too! You made yourself an accomplice in the supreme outrage!—Ah! villain, you are indeed of their blood, the child of—"

He checked himself. Even in that outburst of his rage his great heart recoiled from the barbarity of insulting a mother, however unworthy, in the presence of a son. But the paroxysm was too violent to pass off thus. His clenched fists opened and closed. He seized the first thing that offered itself, a silver paper-knife lying on the table beside an uncut review. He broke in two the blade, which snapped like glass. Then, brought to himself by the very frenzy of the act, he addressed Landri again in a tone in which the tempest still rumbled:—

"But explain yourself, unhappy boy! Explain your silence! Why did you keep silent?"

"Because I loved you," said Landri, "and because my mother was concerned."

A heart-rending cry, so simple and poignant in its humanness, of the sort that the heart emits when it is touched to its lowest depths! M. de Claviers had loved the young man too long and too deeply, that affection was still too largely mingled in the horror which his existence inspired in him, for him not to be moved to the very entrails. He made a gesture which he instantly checked; and, as if he were angry with himself for that weakness, his face clouded anew as he inquired:—

"And from whom did you learn of this thing?"

"On Rue de Solferino—on that Tuesday. Oh! don't compel me to live through that frightful scene again!"

"He spoke to you!" roared M. de Claviers. "To you! to you! He dared!"

"He is dead," replied, nay, rather, implored the young man.

Again his innate generosity carried the day in the nobleman's heart; he placed his hand over his eyes, the same hand with which he had traced over the remains of his false friend the great sign of pardon. These sudden outbursts of his speech and his passion frightened him, no doubt. This interview which he had sought affected him too profoundly. He collected himself thus for a few seconds, and when he began again to speak his tone had changed. He uttered his words now with a sort of haughty coldness, hurried and harsh, which made his interlocutor feel even more keenly perhaps the utter hopelessness of their situation.

"It is useless to prolong an interview that must be as painful to you as to me. Listen to me, I beg, without interrupting me. In my capacity of head of the Claviers family, so long as you bear its name, I consider myself as having with respect to you both duties and rights. My duty is to treat you ostensibly as if you were my son!" His eyelids drooped once more over his eyes, as he said this. "I shall not fail in that duty.—My right is to demand that you abide by my decision in everything that concerns the defence of my family's honor. That honor is threatened. Such villainies as this are a sign." He pointed to the place on the desk where the envelope had been. He still saw it there! "They prove that people have talked about it, and that they are talking. We know enough of the world, you and I, to know that its fickleness exceeds its ferocity. We know, too, that it has, in spite of everything, a sort of justice of its own. There is nobody, I say nobody, who can honestly believe that Geoffroy de Claviers-Grandchamp accepted a legacy knowing it to be infamous. If, therefore, he retains it, it must be because he does not believe that it is infamous; because he is convinced that his wife has been slandered. I propose,—understand me,—I propose that people shall say, I propose that people shall think, that Madame de Claviers has been slandered. Consequently I shall not renounce this legacy after I have publicly agreed to accept it. Need I tell you that that money fills me with horror, and that I shall keep none of it? It is your money. I propose that you shall have it all. But this restitution must be made between you and me. Unfortunately I have already given orders that I cannot cancel without causing comment, to Métivier's man, Cauvet, that miserable Chaffin's successor. So that restitution cannot be made for some little time. In fact, I must have time to carry out my plans.—There's one point settled between us, is it not?"

"It is for you to command," said Landri, "and for me to obey."

"I come to the second point. We can no longer, I do not say live together, but see each other. We must part, and forever, while adhering faithfully to the programme I have outlined. The avowed reason must be one of those that our set will accept without looking beyond it. That reason is all ready—it is the mésalliance which you proposed to make and which you must make. A month ago the mere thought of it was intolerable to me. I showed you that plainly enough. To-day—" he shook his head with a bitter smile. "It is a horrible thing to me that the family you will found will bear the name of mine. But then I can do nothing. The Code would not allow me even to compel recognition of the circumstances. Besides, I have no right to demand that you should not make the most of your life. I cannot prevent that. I cannot prevent you from existing. No. You will marry therefore, ostensibly against my will. You will give me your word not to live in the same city with me, not to present your wife in our circle. I do not wish to meet you or to meet her.—Wait," he exclaimed imperiously, as Landri was about to reply. "If I were not certain, I say again, that people are talking, things would take care of themselves. You would leave this house this morning, never to return. But people are talking, and as neither you nor I have taken anybody into our confidence concerning our two discussions,—at Hez and at Saint-Mihiel,—the abrupt announcement of your marriage at this moment might be taken for a pretext. No matter how well everybody knows that I am not a man of these times, this theory of mésalliances is so weakened of late years, that people might say and would say: 'He has seized this opportunity; there's something else.'—Now, I propose that the reply shall be, as with one voice: 'No, there was nothing else.'—You have left the army under circumstances that have aroused the sympathy of everybody about you—about us, I should say, since no human power can prevent our interests being mutual. It is natural that I should take this time to receive, to bring people about you. I will receive—we will receive, together. I shall find the strength to maintain this attitude, and so will you. It will last as long as we make it, but we must arrange it so that, on the day when the news of your marriage and our rupture becomes known, everybody who is intimate with us shall say: 'Poor Claviers! he was so fond of his son!'—I doubt not that there will be those who will add: 'What a fool!'—One's vanity is not to be wounded when one thinks of honor, and the only way for me to defend Madame de Claviers' honor is to seem to believe in it. In that our interests are really mutual, with a mutuality which is not a falsehood. She was, she still is my wife, and she is your mother."

"I repeat that I will obey you in everything," said the young man.

"It remains for me to touch upon two other points," continued the marquis. "I have reflected much, during these last days, upon the character of the person you are going to marry. You love her. Yes, you must love her dearly to have spoken to me as you did when we were together at Saint-Mihiel. You see, I do not underrate your affection for me. You will be tempted to open your heart to her. If she doesn't deserve to be loved as you love her, do not do it; and if she does deserve it, do not do it. I ask you to give me your word that she shall never learn this ghastly secret from you."

"I give it to you, instantly," Landri replied. He added, in a low voice, so much in dread was he of another outburst of that rage which, he felt, was still smouldering: "But if I should allow myself to tell her the whole truth, I think—that I should tell her nothing new."

"You have spoken to her already!" ejaculated M. de Claviers in a threatening tone. "Confess it. Ah! if you have done that—"

"I have not done it," Landri protested; and with tears in his eyes, he added: "I entreat you, never believe that I could have acted otherwise than you have taught me to act all your life and are still teaching me at this moment. I will tell you everything. Then you can pass judgment on me."

And he began by describing the first indication—her sudden entreaty to him not to go up to the invalid's apartment on Rue de Solferino, on his way from Paris to Grandchamp; and how, after the visit to Jaubourg and the revelation, he had said to himself: "Madame Olier knows all,"—and in what a state of feverish excitement he had arrived at her house, and the horror he had had of speaking, and his silence in the face of her grief, and that grief itself, and their betrothal in that moment of supreme emotion. Then he told of the letter he had received from her immediately after the Hugueville affair, and of the others, in which she had not made a single allusion to M. de Claviers.

That gentleman listened to the confession with an impassive face, which did, however, betray something like wonder. Never had Landri opened his heart to him in this wise when he believed himself to be his son. Never had he ventured to show to his father that charming, quivering sensibility, so passionate and so delicate, so easily wounded and so loving. He disclosed himself in all the loyalty of his refined and affectionate nature, at the moment that the marquis and he were exchanging the words of their final conversation. What more could they say to each other? M. de Claviers felt that impossibility more than all the rest. His old love for his son stirred him anew, and the more it assailed him the more obstinately he stiffened himself against it. Furthermore, throughout that narrative he caught glimpses of Valentine's charming character, and it was intolerably bitter to him to recall another betrothal—his own—forty years before, so superb and splendid, to end in—what? In this heart-rending inquisition about a deadly shame!

"You are right," he said at last, "it is only too evident. She knows all. But how?" His features assumed an expression of deeper chagrin as he added: "For a month I have been constantly confronted by this question, without reaching even a suggestion of a reply: Who can have stolen those letters?—'We have other documents to furnish!'" He repeated the informer's words, in such a grief-stricken tone. "'Other documents!'—Is it the heirs? But I saw them at the funeral. There was an ex-major there, one Monsieur Privat, who spoke to me about you. I can never believe in such hypocrisy! They knew about the will, and they behaved admirably. No, the blow does not come from them. From a servant? With what object? Blackmail. Oh! let him unmask then! I will pay him whatever he wants for those other letters!—But no. A servant would never have devised the devilish irony of the signature: 'an admirer of the house of Claviers-Grandchamp'! That smells of the club, does that dastardly insult, of low-lived envy of those who do not palter with the cowardly customs of these days."—He uttered another roar. "Ah! If I could only find out who it was! If I could!" And, shaking his head: "This is not a question of myself at all. Once more I say, the honor of Madame de Claviers is at stake, and this is the last promise I propose to demand from you, that you would seek what I cannot seek—the hand that dealt the blow. You may find it and you may not. But you must try, so that they may not repeat it."

"Have you no suspicion of anybody?" inquired Landri, "Chaffin, whom you dismissed—"

"Chaffin? Why, I had had the letter ten days when I settled with him. No. Chaffin's a thief. He has never wanted anything but money. He'd have tried to sell the papers. Let us not go astray in suppositions as useless as my lamentations. Perhaps by questioning Madame Olier you may learn something. Too much, perhaps."—A pause.—"No. That is not possible, either."

What was the shocking idea to which that "No" was an answer, and the "But if it were?" that he added?

"You are aware of my desires now," he concluded.

"I will comply with them," said the young man. He had understood the wicked and atrocious suspicion that had suddenly suggested itself to the cruelly betrayed husband, and he pitied him the more for it. "I promise you."

"That is well," rejoined M. de Claviers. "I accept your promise. Each day I will write you my instructions concerning what I wish you to do. It is unnecessary for us to be alone together again unless you have some information to give me as to the inquiry you are to undertake. I do not hope very much from it.—I forgot. I asked the Charluses and Bressieux to luncheon. Be here at quarter past twelve. Now, go."

"Shall I have the strength to keep that promise of mine?" Landri asked himself as he went down at the appointed hour to the small salon where the marquis received his guests when he gave a luncheon. To reach it he had to pass through a succession of magnificent apartments, and at a distance he could hear the ringing tones of the loud voice that was associated with all the memories of his childhood and youth. Was the man who, but a short time before, by turns stoical and desperate, cold as ice and aflame with passion, accused, commanded, groaned, suspected, in such a frenzy of grief and indignation, really the same as he who greeted him with these words, in a jovial tone, as he waved his hand toward the friends whose coming he had announced:—

"Well, well! So you keep us waiting, master hero! You have no right to, being new at the game! But you have credit for some time to come, after what you have done. Hasn't he, Mademoiselle Marie?"

"Oh! a big bunch of it," said Marie de Charlus, laughing with her beautiful white teeth. "Ah! you tease me. Monsieur de Claviers, and I'll revenge myself by talking slang. But that won't prevent my going back to the French of your old France to say to your son that we are all, men and women alike, very, very proud of him."

"Very proud," echoed Charlus. "To see a fine thing finely done always gives pleasure. But when the one who does it belongs to the comme il faut, class, the pleasure is doubled."

"It is indeed," said Bressieux, shaking Landri's hand in his turn. "We are not spoiled in that way."

"It's because comme il faut folk think too much of their cakes and ale," retorted Marie, glancing at the Seigneur de la Rochebrocante with the laughing insolence that was peculiar to her.

"It is principally because the comme il faut folk are not what they should be [comme il faudrait]," said the marquis. "It's so easy to be of one's own party, nothing more, whereas nowadays no one is of his own opinion even; and I see none but people who, on the pretext of broad and liberal ideas, admit that their enemies are in the right. Landri was of his own party, that's the whole story, without talk and without parade. You must tell them about it, my boy, and how those excellent peasants applauded you and your dragoons when you turned on your heel in the teeth of the disgusted prefect.—But luncheon is served. Will you allow me to offer you my arm, mademoiselle? Lardin has promised to surpass himself, and we shall have, to drink this tall fellow's health, a certain Musigny of a royal year. For we still drink, and drink Burgundy too, we old fellows, just as we still eat, and with a good appetite, in that old France that you make sport of. A sweet thing your new France is! All mineral waters and diet!"

Liveried servants held the chairs for the guests around the table, the dark wood of which had no cloth, according to the old ceremonial of déjeuners à la française. The great garden imparted an almost rural atmosphere of peace to that room, which the host enlivened with his cordiality. To one who observed him closely the contagious warmth of his joviality was in too striking contrast with the feverish gleam of his eyes, and the traces of suffering on his face. But the pride of defending his name sustained him; and, forestalling himself any possible observation of that sort, he, who had never lied, said:—

"I was very anxious for Landri to return. 'That's the true remedy for me.' I told Louvet, when he talked about diet, apropos of those two or three attacks of vertigo I told you of, Charlus. But it seems to me that this young man doesn't seem glad enough to see us. You'll see that he'll regret the army."

And, not to fall behind the tragic heroism of that comedy, Landri, who was being served at that moment with eggs à la Grandchamp, one of the accomplished Lardin's thousand and one creations, remarked, laughing in his turn:—

"I certainly sha'n't regret the cuisine of the mess. It is true that your chef has outdone himself to celebrate my fall from grace."

He put his fork to his lips with the respectful manner of a gourmand to whom eating is a solemn affair, which drew from Bressieux the exclamation:—

"You are coming to it! The table is the least deceitful of all things, and when one of Lardin's chefs-d'œuvre is put before one, in Chantilly of such delicacy as this," he added, pointing to his plate,—and one could not tell from the twinkling of his eye whether he was giving vent to his enthusiasm for antiques or was indulging in secret sarcasm,—"one may well say, despite the famous mot, that one knows the joy of living!"

VIII ON A SCENT

Landri had not been mistaken—those phrases that had escaped M. de Claviers, to be instantly interrupted:—the "too much, perhaps," and the "but if it were!"—signified that for an instant at least that man, formerly so entirely a stranger to all the meannesses of suspicion, had harbored the unfortunate suspicion that Madame Olier was the denouncer of Madame de Claviers. An utterly insane idea even from a physical standpoint! How could Valentine ever have obtained the letter?—And even more insane morally. It attributed to a young woman, gratuitously, without the slightest evidence, the most shameless of schemes: to separate Landri forever from the man who had hitherto believed him to be his son! And with what object? To marry him with less difficulty?—That theory would not stand a single instant. The wound must in truth have been very deep, that the great-souled grand seigneur should have come so quickly to such a transformation of character.

On leaving the house on Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, at the end of that luncheon which had left him with the impression of a nightmare, Landri recalled those words among all the rest, and that insinuation so insulting to his Valentine. He found therein an additional reason for desiring to know who had committed that two-fold private crime, unpunishable by law, yet truly ferocious: that theft of a correspondence, aggravated by an anonymous denunciation. In that interview, the strain of which was almost beyond human endurance, he had seen distinctly that only that knowledge could relieve in any degree the agony with which the marquis was suffocating. He himself realized the necessity of the destruction of those "other documents," as the anonymous writer had said, in heartless official phraseology. Such letters, if retained, constituted a too formidable menace against the dead wife's honor, which the betrayed husband was generously determined to save. How could the son have failed to feel that his self-esteem required him to take part in that work of salvation? And how could Valentine's lover not have it at heart that not even the shadow of the shade of that most unreasonable suspicion should be let hover above the woman whom he was to marry and whom M. de Claviers would never know?

That he could have thought so of her, even in a moment of suffering and frenzy, was enough to intensify the young man's longing to see the light in that abhorrent darkness. But what scent was he to follow, and upon what indications? He asked himself this question, set free at last from that constraint against his natural instincts to which he whom he had so long called the "Émigré" had condemned him—while condemning himself thereto through a sense of honor worthy of another age.

He bent his steps to Valentine's house, to seek in her soft eyes, in her dear smile, in her loved presence, strength to endure this test, the end of which it was not for him to fix. Would he question her, as M. de Claviers had not hesitated to advise him to do? To learn what? That the disinherited relations had told her of Jaubourg's will, and that she had drawn therefrom a conclusion only too evident to one already informed? That she was informed, Landri knew only too well. In the long solitary meditations of his weeks of arrest at Saint-Mihiel, he had succeeded in piecing together the whole story, and in understanding why the Privats had always treated him with a coolness which he had noticed only at a distance.—Yes, what was the use of trying to learn anything more? If it were the Privats from whom the anonymous letter came, Valentine did not know it, and what purpose would it serve to introduce her to such villainy? True lovers have a passionate and rapturous respect for that fine flower of delicacy and of illusion which constitutes the spotless charm of the feminine heart, when it has not been prematurely brutalized by the blighting realities of life. This sentiment alone would have deterred Landri from questioning his sweetheart, even if he had not felt a sort of spasm of horror at the thought of accusing his mother to her. Silence is the pious charity of the son to whom reverence is forbidden. And then, too, even if he had essayed to speak, the young woman would have arrested the blasphemous words on his lips.

He had no sooner crossed the threshold of the little salon on Rue Monsieur, where she awaited him, than from the glance with which she greeted him he became aware that she too dreaded a painful explanation. And how could he mar the delight of their meeting by such a hideous disclosure, finding her as he found her, so youthful and lovely, still in black—although the approaching end of her mourning could already be detected!

Valentine wore a gown of crêpe de Chine and lace, the soft fabrics admirably in harmony with the slender grace of her whole person. On her neck a string of pearls glistened softly, a bunch of violets bloomed at her waist, and on the light curls of her ash-colored hair was a torsade of black tulle. It was, as it were, the rebirth of the woman,—those jewels and flowers, and that evident yet artless desire to please which imparted a flush as of a rose-petal to her thin cheeks, a gleam to her blue eyes, a quiver to her smile.

She had her son with her, and was feverishly smoothing his hair, of a golden shade like the pale gold of her own. She pushed him gently toward Landri as he entered the room, as if he were a symbol of the union of which she dreamed—a union in which nothing of the child's happiness should be sacrificed, in which he should always remain with her and his second father.

"Give Monsieur de Claviers a kiss, Ludovic," she said, "and tell him that you and your mother prayed for him while he was in prison, so unjustly."

"It's true," said the child, "and I am glad you've come out! They won't put you in again, will they, monsieur?" he added apprehensively.

"No," replied Landri; and he, too, caressed the golden curls, while the mother said:—

"I kept you here only because you wanted to see Monsieur de Claviers. You have seen him, so go to your lessons.—He is fond of you," she continued, when the door had closed behind the little fellow, "and that is so sweet to me!" And, taking the young man's hand in her own, she added: "Yes, I prayed so earnestly for you,—but before your arrest,—that you would do what you did do, and I am so proud, so proud! When I read in the newspapers what happened at Hugueville, I felt so proud of you!"

"And I," he said, "it is so sweet to be with you once more!"

And it was true that the affectionate welcome of that passionately loved woman, after the heart-rending scenes of the morning, which had themselves followed upon a succession of racking and corroding emotions, was like the divine coolness of the oasis between two wearisome journeys over the scorching sand of the desert—a feast of the heart almost too intoxicating, so that it seemed as if the contrast could not be true, that that rapture was a lie and on the point of vanishing.

"Yes," he continued, "so sweet. For, you see, I have no one but you in all the world."

"Have you spoken to Monsieur de Claviers of your plans?" she asked. "You have never written me about it."

She interpreted Landri's words only in part in their real meaning, not wishing to seem to have divined the other part. Keen as was her intuition, she had not discerned the whole of the drama in which her dearly loved friend was involved. She had guessed that he was Jaubourg's son and that he knew it. She had no idea that the marquis also knew it.

"I have spoken to him."

"And he has refused his consent?"

"He has refused it."

"Landri," she resumed after a pause, "you know now that I love you, and how dearly! When I answered yes to your question five weeks ago, I did so without any illusions. I was certain that Monsieur de Claviers would never agree to our marriage. I disregarded that, because I saw, I thought I saw, that you really could not live without me, and because I loved you. Do not seek in what I say something that is not there. I love you still. I am, I shall always be, ready to give you my life. But if you must face difficulties that are too great, engage in a contest that is too painful, I want you to know that you are free. I will wait for you one year, two years, ten years, twenty years, if necessary—forever." She repeated: "Forever."

"After what Monsieur de Claviers and I have said to each other," Landri replied, "everything is at an end between us, whether I marry you or not."

She looked at him while he uttered these words in so melancholy a tone that she shuddered at it. He turned a little pale, realizing that she understood; and in an outrush of pity like that of the other day she drew him to her, pressing his hand against her heart.

"I will try to wipe that out, too," she said, quivering with emotion.

It was his part to seem not to comprehend all that that protestation signified, and he rejoined:—

"He was not content with refusing. He insists that, when I am married, I shall not live in Paris."

"I will answer you like Ruth," she said. "'Whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge.'"

"Even if I do not simply leave Paris—even away from France?"

"Even away from France."

A little sign disclosed the intensity of the emotion with which she was overflowing. The pupils of her eyes dilated so that her blue eyes seemed to be black; and enveloping, caressing, embracing Landri in that sombre glance, she said:—

"You have no idea of the affection that I have been heaping up for you in my heart during these three years when I have hidden from you so much of what I felt, in order not to ruin you. That love has burrowed into me to such a depth that it would make me tremble if you were not you, if I were not sure that you will never expect of me anything except my duty, that you will never ask me to live under such conditions that my son would not be brought up, as he must be, so as to remain, even away from his country, a child of France!" She repeated: "Even away from his country;" then asked, timidly: "Does Monsieur de Claviers really demand it?"

"He demands nothing," Landri replied.

"But you think that that's the only way to reconcile him in some degree to the idea of our marriage, eh?" she asked; and, as he bowed: "Then we must not hesitate," she added. "You do not know either how much you have taught me to love him, even without knowing him; how grateful I am to him for the influence he has had on you, for the traces of his wonderful sense of delicacy which I find in yours. When I said yes to you the other day, I had a feeling of remorse for taking you from your duty and from his affection. You tell me that there is no occasion for it, that all is at an end between you. That takes away my remorse but makes me so sorry for you. Remember at all events that to part is not to forget each other. You may retain an image of each other against which you have no reproach to make. I hope that it may be so between Monsieur de Claviers and you, and that when he thinks of you he will realize that you loved him, that you still love him, as he deserves, and that there is only this life between you."

The trees in the little garden beyond the door-window were as desolate as those which spread their leafless branches outside the high windows of the dining-room on Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. The leaden sky of that winter's day was as depressing. The young woman's words, albeit not especially significant, and so considerately vague, affirmed none the less, by their very reticences, the same ghastly and incontrovertible fact which had weighed so heavily upon Landri's heart during the agonizing formal luncheon an hour earlier. But once more Valentine had the miraculous double sight of love. She had appealed to the only sentiment in that suffering heart which could assist him to live through the far too trying period that was to precede the ostensible rupture with the marquis. He could find the requisite strength only in his passionate craving to prove to him the depth of an affection which had never been more intensely alive.

At those words of his compassionate friend and loving monitress, Landri's heart, always so susceptible to affection, was once more inspired with a genuine purpose, and when he left Rue Monsieur, he was conscious, even in his distress, of that species of inward satisfaction which one derives from a determined plan of action, when it is based upon a courageous acceptance of circumstances, even the most hostile, and upon the most deep-rooted attachments of our being. Yes, although the rôle of dissimulation imposed upon him by M. de Claviers was most painful, he would summon strength to go on with it as long as it should be necessary. Difficult as was the task of discovering the anonymous informer, he would devote himself to it. He was able to offer that reparation to the great and noble-hearted victim of the falsehood of which he himself was born. He would offer it to him before leaving Paris—and, perhaps, other reparation too. When he had spoken to Valentine of the project of making their home far away from France, he had given voice to one of the ideas that had been most constantly in his mind during those last weeks. In a voluntary exile to the western part of the United States,—or perhaps of Canada; there he would still be at home!—he saw a possibility of laying aside, without exciting comment, that name of Claviers-Grandchamp, which was not his own. With what emotion he had heard the dear woman's reply: "Even away from France!"—And that assurance added to his courage.

He needed that reinforcement of courage to endure the dinner which he was obliged to eat that evening at the club on Rue Scribe, sitting opposite M. de Claviers. The latter had transmitted to him his commands to that effect, as had been agreed, in a note which contained this line only: "Dinner at the club, at eight o'clock."—He needed it again, and more, the next day, to consent to take his seat beside the marquis, at ten o'clock, in the box at the Opéra which had been Madame de Claviers'. Charles Jaubourg had passed so many evenings there gazing at his mistress enthroned in all the splendor of her social royalty. Something of that liaison floated still about the hangings of the box, which the châtelain of Grandchamp had retained in pious regard for her memory.

And what courage again, on the days that followed, to appear at banquet after banquet, at reception after reception, always beside that companion, who, in the presence of witnesses, continued to treat him with the old-time warmth and cordiality! And as soon as they were alone, in the automobile which took them from or to the house, not a word, not a glance; and upon that face, more haggard and more aged from day to day, was the stamp of the haughty grief that will never complain or forgive.

How many times, as they drove home thus, Landri was tempted to ask: "Are you satisfied with me?"

Satisfied! What a word to be uttered between them! Would the time ever come when he could utter a different word? when he could say to him: "I know the name of the anonymous villain who wrote that infamous letter. Here are the other documents that he threatened you with?"

Between the moments that he passed in this way, in this heart-rending attitude of dissimulation before the world, and the hours which he had at once adopted the delicious habit of devoting, every afternoon, to the comforter of Rue Monsieur, his only preoccupation was this: to find a scent and follow it. But what scent? But how?

"I must proceed upon the definite facts," he said to himself the first day. Now, what were these "definite facts?" That the sending of Madame de Claviers' letter to her husband was coincident with the publication of Jaubourg's will. What could the sender have hoped? That M. de Claviers would refuse to accept the property. Who would have profited by his refusal? The heirs-at-law. It was advisable therefore to investigate in that direction, leaving Privat out of the question. Landri knew that officer too well to suppose for an instant that he, who was rich in his own right and through his wife, would have been guilty of so base an action. For whose benefit, indeed? The Privats had no children.

Certain inquiries, cautiously instituted, convinced him that the other three heirs were no more open to suspicion. One was a wholesale tradesman on Rue du Sentier, Paris; another, the owner of extensive vineyards near Lectoure, where the Jaubourgs originally came from; the third, a magistrate of distinction, held the office of procureur-général in one of the courts of appeal in the Nord.

There was a whole course of social philosophy in this list of Charles Jaubourg's cousinships. He himself had been the fashionable bourgeois who becomes an aristocrat. He had, unconsciously, in a liaison with a great lady, gratified the craving for being ennobled which is the natural instinct, and if well directed, perfectly legitimate and praiseworthy, of the best representatives of the middle classes. To Landri's mind the stations occupied by the dead man's relations were simply a guaranty that no one of them was the denouncer he sought. These first "definite facts" suggested no tenable hypothesis.

Another "definite fact" was the theft of Madame de Claviers' letter. A letter may be stolen only from the person who sends it or the person to whom it is sent. The Marquise de Claviers-Grandchamp had been dead fifteen years. It was possible that the letter had been stolen fifteen years before, and that the thief had let all that time pass without using it, but it was most improbable. Now, when one is pursuing an investigation of this sort, the rule is not to turn to the improbable until one has followed all the probable clues. The wisest course therefore was to assume that it had been stolen at Jaubourg's apartment. What a contradiction it was that a man so prudent, so on his guard, who had worked so hard to conceal his fatherhood should preserve such terribly condemnatory pages! It might be explained by the ardor of a passion that must have been very great. Did he not sacrifice his whole life to it? Precisely because he knew the danger of not destroying such a correspondence, Madame de Claviers' lover must have multiplied his precautions. That letter and the others referred to by the anonymous writer could have been stolen therefore only by a person familiar with all his habits, and at a time when he was incapable of keeping watch on them. The theft must have been committed either during his sickness or immediately after his death. What was the meaning of those words, "other documents?" Evidently, the rest of the correspondence. But why was that single letter sent, unaccompanied by any demand for money, and followed by several weeks of silence? That was an enigma. But it did not explain away the "definite fact."

That fact seemed to require that a wisely conducted inquiry should begin with an interview with Joseph, the confidential servant of whom Jaubourg had said on his death-bed: "You can believe him. He is reliable, perfectly reliable." Landri had not seen him since the time in the chamber of death when the marquis was kneeling at the bedside, praying. In imagination he saw that figure, in black coat and white cravat, making the final arrangements—that impassive face of a close-mouthed witness or confederate. Joseph had been in his master's service thirty years. He must inevitably have discovered Jaubourg's liaison with Madame de Claviers. He knew the secret of Landri's birth. The young man recalled his singular expression when he brought him a message, at Grandchamp, on the day before his master's death. Moreover, was not Joseph there, assisting Dr. Pierre Chaffin, when the invalid, in his delirium, said so many terribly incriminating things? That thought made the prospect of a conversation with the man so painful that Landri recoiled at first.

"This is cowardly," he said to himself the next moment. "If I can't face suffering of that sort for him, of what am I capable?"

Having determined upon this interview, the most elementary shrewdness bade him bring it about without warning. The young man was not aware of one fact which was likely to facilitate his task: M. de Claviers, as may be imagined, had shrunk in horror from the thought of putting his foot in Jaubourg's apartment again. Having resolved to return the detestable legacy, and not choosing to order a sale, which would have attracted notice, he had placed the apartment, until further orders, in charge of the old maître d'hôtel. When Landri went to Rue de Solferino to ask his address, the concierge replied with evident surprise, "Why, he's upstairs, Monsieur le Comte!" which proved to the investigator what a delicate affair he had undertaken. The slightest imprudence was likely to arouse a very dangerous curiosity. And so all the efforts of his will were combined to make his face impenetrable while he awaited the maître d'hôtel in the library, into which an old woman who answered his ring had ushered him. She was the "spouse" of "Monsieur Joseph," who acted as laundress to the establishment during Jaubourg's lifetime. The couple had a daughter. Mademoiselle Amélie, whom their indulgent employer had allowed them to keep with them. How was it possible to associate the idea of a criminal conspiracy with the head of a bourgeois family, hungry for respectability?

Madame Joseph had a certain matronly dignity, which she displayed as she opened the windows and explained the music of a piano, which was Mademoiselle Amélie's.

"We had it brought into the apartment," she said, "because we never leave it now, on account of the bric-à-brac."

The pianiste's father appeared, sad and deferential, respectful and curious. The change in the Marquis de Claviers since his master's death had not escaped that sagacious observer. He had guessed its secret cause, but had not been able to divine how his long-abused credulity had been so suddenly enlightened. When he found himself in Landri's presence, his desire to find out gave to his ordinarily expressionless eyes, in spite of himself, a sharpness which was hateful to Landri—less so, however, than another circumstance both ghastly and comical. Joseph was in deep mourning. He was dressed in garments which had belonged to the dead man. The folds of the coat and trousers, which were of English cut, as befitted a man of Jaubourg's pretensions to style, had retained the outlines of their former owner's body, the features, so to speak, of his movements. This evocation of the dead was made to assume a caricaturish aspect by the servant's involuntary mimicry of his master, who had evidently had a hypnotic influence upon him. He regretted him sincerely, and there was genuine grief in his voice when he said to Landri:—

"Ah! Monsieur le Comte, I told Monsieur le Comte at Grandchamp that monsieur would not last two days longer. Such a kind master! Monsieur le Comte knows that he left my wife and me an annuity of thirty-six hundred francs and ten thousand francs for Amélie's marriage portion. I am going to be able to retire to a little place in my province that I had bought already with my savings. People tell me: 'You're going to be happy, Monsieur Joseph.' But that isn't true, Monsieur le Comte. To have watched him go, as I did, spoils everything for me."

"Since you were so devoted to him," rejoined Landri, studying the effect of his words on that face, which was gradually overspread by amazement, "you will certainly assist me in an investigation, which indeed interests you yourself. Some papers have disappeared—letters, to which Monsieur Jaubourg attached the greatest importance. Observe, Joseph, that I do not accuse you. I came here to ask you simply, is it possible that anybody entered the apartment while Monsieur Jaubourg was ill, and took these papers?"

"No, Monsieur le Comte," replied the servant eagerly, "it isn't possible."

The gleam that flashed from his eyes betrayed an alarm that was not feigned. It was not for himself that he was afraid. He had nothing to do with the horrible deed. But, in that case, who was it? as M. de Claviers had said with a groan—who?

"Monsieur kept no papers, on principle," Joseph continued. "I have heard him say many a time: 'When I am gone, there'll be no need to schedule anything. I destroy everything.'—But he had preserved one package of letters. This is how I know. The morning of the day he sent me to Grandchamp—that was Monday—he felt very sick. He insisted on my helping him to get up, in spite of the doctor's orders. He opened a strong-box that he kept in his room. He took out two bundles of papers with his own hands and put them in the fire. He wouldn't go back to bed till he saw that there was nothing left of them but ashes. And as the key of the strong-box never left him—"

"But during the days just before that Monday, he was in bed. Where was the key then?"

"Hanging on his watch-chain, in the drawer of his night-table."

"Couldn't some one have come in, while he was asleep, for instance, and you were not there?"

"One of the other servants, perhaps. I'll answer for them as for myself. I was the one who selected them."

"But the doctor?" queried Landri.

"Monsieur le Docteur Chaffin?" said the maître-d'hôtel. "Of course. But I can't believe it of him," he added, after a few seconds' reflection. "Now, if it was his father—"

"His father?" Landri repeated. "Come, tell me your whole thought."

"I haven't any thought," replied Joseph, "except that I know that monsieur was very suspicious of him."

"And he didn't come here during his illness?"

"Yes, I remember now—on Saturday. But he didn't see monsieur, for I was with him. He sent for me to get late news to carry to Monsieur le Marquis."

Thus Chaffin's image was associated once more in Landri's mind with the mysterious scenes that must have been enacted about that bed of death. Chaffin had wandered around that death-chamber during the last hours. Chaffin had been in the apartment. Once, the servant said. What did he know about it? Notwithstanding that he had lavished the most assiduous attentions on the sick man, he must have been absent at times. It might be that Chaffin, advised of his absence, had seized the opportunity, had entered the sick-room with the doctor's connivance. If at that moment the invalid was asleep, morphine assisting, the theft of the letters was explained.

The young man had not left Joseph ten minutes before this explanation had taken shape in his mind. It rested upon a series of almost fantastic hypotheses: that Chaffin knew of the existence of Madame de Claviers' letters; that he knew where Jaubourg kept them locked up; that Pierre Chaffin was in connivance with his father; that the strong-box had not a combination lock. But nothing appeared fantastic to Landri since the terrible scene during which he had learned the secret of his birth. When everything of which we were certain, which was, as it were, a part of us,—loving regard for a mother's memory, respectful affection for a father, family pride, assurance of social rank,—has crumbled at one stroke, nothing surprises us. The most extraordinary events seem simple to us.

Not one of these difficulties deterred Landri. The one thing that he did not understand was Chaffin's interest in the theft and in the denunciation that followed it. From the moment that he knew that his former tutor was capable of malversation in managing the property of such a man as the marquis, he adjudged him a scoundrel and capable of the worst crimes. He remembered the step he had undertaken at the time of his last visit to Grandchamp, and he interpreted it as being in pursuance of one of his detestable schemes: to precipitate a disaster under cover of which his peculations would pass unnoticed. All this was true, but it came in collision with the further "definite fact," that the denunciatory letter, according to M. de Claviers' own testimony, was sent some time before the dishonest manager was dismissed. So that Chaffin could not have been guided, in sending it, by a desire for revenge. But a man does not act without a motive, especially when the inevitable consequence of his action is the ruin of two lives. At that time Chaffin had no motive for committing that useless and barbarous villainy. No. He must seek elsewhere.

"No motive?" the young man asked himself a few days later. He had exhausted himself in hypotheses and efforts, each more unavailing than the last, even to the point of taking the trouble to interview personally all the people who had been in Jaubourg's service under Joseph, and he returned to the hypothesis to which, in spite of all the objections to it, an unconquerable instinct guided him. "But I know absolutely nothing about that man, whom I thought I knew so well, and in whom I was so deceived. I don't even know why he was dismissed. From whom can I find out? Why, from Métivier, of course. Besides, I shall need him in connection with my marriage."

They had been discussing the date, Valentine and he, during the day. True to their compact of silence, neither of them had mentioned M. de Claviers. Landri continued to avoid explaining why he delayed in making the sommation, which would hasten the longed-for moment of their union, and she continued to avoid questioning him. He foresaw, however, from various indications,—glances, tones of voice, gestures,—that the heroic marquis himself would not endure much longer their too painful relations, and he was beginning to discuss with the dear companion of his life to come the details of their plans. In these discussions she showed herself as he had always known her, delicately judicious, and strong of heart.

The project of living on a large estate in the country gave place more and more definitely to the dream of carrying on a "ranch" in Western Canada—Ontario or Manitoba. A large amount of ready money would be necessary. So that a pretext was at hand for the visit to Métivier.

The apprehension of an overstrained perspicacity is so distressing at critical moments that Landri went several times as far as Place de la Madeleine before he could make up his mind to go up to the notary's office. He succeeded at last, as generally happens with over-sensitive imaginations, in overcoming that apprehension, and realized that it had been entirely subjective.

Métivier greeted him with the simple courtesy of a notary employed to do a certain thing, with whom to think of his client is to think of documents and figures. Of the family tragedy in which the Claviers-Grandchamps were nearing shipwreck he had no suspicion. On the other hand, he had shrewdly unravelled all the threads of the conspiracy entered into by Chaffin and his confederates, and when Landri, after speaking of certain formalities that were indispensable for the final settlement of his mother's estate, in order to account for his visit, touched upon the subject of his former tutor, Métivier exclaimed:—

"What did he do? Why, it's the simplest thing in the world. He came to an understanding with certain people from whom your father had borrowed money, in such wise as to secure a percentage of their profits. I am expecting Altona this very morning. If he should happen to come while you are here, you would see a superb specimen of the usurer of to-day. He is the dealer in curiosities, who sells you a portrait by Velasquez, a Boule cabinet, a bust by Houdon, for a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand francs, and buys them back for fifty or sixty thousand. The amusing feature of it is that the Velasquez and the Boule and the Houdon are genuine, and that the customer wouldn't do a bad bit of business by keeping them. This enables Master Altona to pass himself off as a collector, a dilettante, a connoisseur of art!—This fellow and his gang learned of Monsieur le Marquis de Claviers' financial embarrassment. I am somewhat to blame. I recommended your father to apply to a certain Gruet, whom I thought trustworthy, and he was of the same stripe as they! They knew also what the treasures of Grandchamp were worth. You see the scheme; it's familiar enough: to force the marquis to a sale by getting all his debts in one hand. Chaffin was to have his commission—thirty or forty thousand francs, perhaps more. He undertook to offer Monsieur de Claviers four millions, in Altona's name, for a list catalogued in the notes to your family history! He had the audacity to do that! And Monsieur le Marquis is so kind-hearted that he explained it to me: 'He thought he was doing me a service,' he said.—Luckily we were able to enlighten him by discovering the traces of a most commonplace rascality: bills settled twice, if you please—once to the tradesman, and once, to whom?—to Master Chaffin.—Monsieur de Claviers cut off his head. When I wrote you that he was severe, Cauvet, the advocate I got for you, had found only one of these bills. I said to myself that there was a chance for a mistake. For all a man's a notary, he has difficulty in believing in certain comedies, and this Chaffin played one for me when I questioned him, with your letter in my hand. To dismiss him so summarily was to run the risk of never getting to the bottom of many things. However, we're beginning to see daylight. As I always say to my cousin Jacques Molan, the dramatic author, the true modern comedy is played in our own homes."

"Then," queried Landri, as Métivier complacently mentioned his cousinship to an illustrious writer, of whom he was proud after having been very much ashamed of him, "then you think that Chaffin was interested in the Altona deal?"

"There's no doubt of it!" replied the notary. "By the way,"—one of his clerks had just knocked at the door and handed him a card,—"if you'll allow me to have him shown in here, you will see Altona himself. He is here. You can measure up the man; you will be able to judge whether it is possible that, having chosen the end, he resorted to the means, every means," and going through the motion of counting money, "this included."

Landri did not need this meeting with the usurer-antiquary to know what to think concerning the nature of the conspiracy against the pictures, the tapestries and the furniture of the château of Grandchamp. The recollection of the advice insinuated by Chaffin: "Ask for your property," would have sufficed of itself, without this visit to Métivier, to convince him that the sending of the anonymous letter might be explained simply by a desire for money. At the moment that Jaubourg's legacy fell in, M. de Claviers was in the clutches of the Altona claim. He could free himself only by selling the treasures of the château. Chaffin's disappointment was proportioned, no doubt, to the commission that he lost. His knew his master's temperament. To betray to him his wife's liaison with his false friend was to make that money impossible of acceptance by him. If the rascal had letters of Madame de Claviers in hand, all was explained. This theory was less chimerical than the other, but upon how many hypotheses did even it rest! For a moment it seemed certainty to Landri, ready to collapse, as the first had done, upon examination.

Meanwhile he exchanged a salutation with Master Altona, as the notary had slightingly dubbed the dealer in antiques. One had but to see the two men side by side, to understand that ten years earlier he would have called him "my boy," and ten years later he would call him "monsieur le baron."

Altona had one of those bloodless faces, faded for good and all, which have no age. He was very black-haired, with moustaches and an imperial cut in a fashion to give him the aspect of one of the portraits he dealt in. His brown, velvety eyes, which were like two spots on his pale face, betrayed his Oriental origin, as did the strange mixture of servility and arrogance displayed by his whole person. A little too well-dressed, with too much jewelry, too faultlessly correct, one realized nevertheless that one last touch of "side"—we use the language of the sharpers in his employ—would make of him a passably successful make-believe grand seigneur. Métivier, on the contrary, that highly esteemed notary, well-to-do and well established, but dull and heavy, and made apoplectic at fifty-five by his sedentary profession and by over-indulgence in eating and smoking, would never be anything more than a vulgar French bourgeois. Through the chance that brought them together, in the presence of the heir of a very great name on the eve of disappearing forever, the four walls of that green-box-lined office contained a striking abstract of contemporary history.

Maxwell Altona—although born in Germany he bore that English baptismal name—seemed in no wise embarrassed to find himself in the presence of a son of the debtor he had plotted to rob, and when Métivier had named them to each other, he said calmly, with his shrewdest glance and his most engaging smile:—

"I am the more pleased to have the honor of being presented to you, Monsieur le Comte, because I followed your trial with the deepest interest and greatly admired your action at Hugueville. You have taken your leave."—Here the foreigner betrayed himself, by that little Germanism; no one is perfect.—"You are proposing, no doubt, to devote yourself to your fine château. I am well acquainted with its marvels."—At this point, one of the indescribably ironical expressions that play over the mysterious features of these international tradesmen.—"Allow me to suggest to you an opportunity that is perhaps unique. You have but one of the two Gobelins of the Turkish Embassy. It is the entry of Mehemet Effendi into Paris, in 1721, with the mission of congratulating the King on his accession," he added, addressing Métivier. Then, turning again to the possible purchaser, "I know where the other is."

"Isn't he amazing?" the notary asked Landri as he showed him out. "One affair has failed. He goes about another at once. He was going to strip you. He sells to you. Faith, I advise you to look at the tapestry. I am sure it's genuine. That's his probity, the pirate! He doesn't cheat about his wares. And Cauvet won't have a commission, I promise you."

A commission? Was it possible that Chaffin had in very truth not hesitated to commit the most shocking of private crimes, the betrayal of a dead wife to her husband, of an illegitimate son to the head of a family, after all the benefactions he had received, and all for fear of losing his percentage, as Métivier had said, of the four millions? Was it possible? At all events the objection urged at first by M. de Claviers was removed: the fact that the anonymous letter was sent before Chaffin's dismissal did not prove that he was not guilty. And yet how many things still made it improbable that he was! And in the first place, that he had had Madame de Claviers' letters in his possession! Improbability? Yes. Impossibility? No. Here the son's complicity once more appeared as the essential and sufficient condition.

All these ideas were whirling about in Landri's mind as he returned from Place de la Madeleine toward Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. They suddenly crystallized in a resolution which caused him to turn his back on his home and walk toward Place de la Concorde, then through the Tuileries toward the Seine, Notre-Dame, and Ile Saint-Louis. How many times he had followed that route, a mere child, on his way from the paternal abode to Quai de Béthune, where Chaffin's family then lived. Having agreed, it will be remembered, to live with his pupil, he often took him on Sunday to pass a few hours with Madame Chaffin, their daughter Louise, and their son Pierre, in the fourth floor apartment, from the balcony of which one commanded such a beautiful view of the Seine, with the chevet of Notre-Dame at the right, the dome of the Panthéon and of the Val-de-Grâce in front, and at the left the thickets of the Jardin des Plantes and the Salpêtrière. In course of time the Chaffins had gone down to the third floor, then to the first, without leaving the house, which was convenient to the young medical student because of the proximity of the Hôtel-Dieu and the Latin Quarter. Louise had never married, and Madame Chaffin was still living.

These recollections of an existence apparently so upright protested in the former pupil's heart against the insulting step he was preparing to take. He was going to question Pierre Chaffin. But great heaven! That virtuous occupant of an old house on a patriarchal quay had actually put his fingers in his master's fortune. Were there but one chance in a thousand, in ten thousand, that he had likewise stolen Madame de Claviers' letters, with the connivance of his son Pierre, that one chance was enough to cause Landri to try, at whatever cost, to find out.

"What do I risk?" he said to himself on the way. "I ask him whether, to his knowledge, any one except himself and the servants entered the sick man's bedroom. If no one went in, he will say no, simply. If some one did go in, and that some one was his father, he will be confused. If it is only for a second, I shall see it. That will be a certain indication, and then I shall act."

How? By what steps? He did not know. But on the other hand he did know that he was on his way to another trying scene in which all the suffering of the last weeks would be revived, on seeing the physician for the first time since that fatal Tuesday. He recalled Pierre's preoccupied expression as he came from his delirious patient's bedside, and the persistence with which he repeated: "It's downright madness." But what then? They were likely to meet at any time, and if Landri really proposed to keep to the compact he had made with M. de Claviers and to defend his mother's memory, guilty though she was, against this witness of Jaubourg's death-agony, it was much better to see him at once and to bear himself in their interview as if the dying man had in truth talked mere nonsense, which was of no consequence.

There was, to be sure, a difficulty of another sort. Pierre was the son of a man dismissed by the marquis for dishonesty. True. But Landri was not making a personal call upon him. He was going to seek information at the hands of a doctor who had been paid by M. de Claviers; for Jaubourg's residuary legatee must have paid all the debts of the deceased, including the expenses of the last sickness. Moreover, if Pierre was not Chaffin's confederate, he certainly did not know the true reason of his father's discharge. His father would never have told him. In that case there was nothing in Landri's procedure to surprise the doctor. In the contrary case, why spare a couple of brigands?

All varieties of grief have their egoism. There was another hypothesis which Madame de Claviers' son did not consider: perhaps, since his father's dismissal, Pierre Chaffin had been passing through a crisis similar to that of which his playmate in childhood was undergoing the terrors. Between ignorance and actual complicity, there is room for suspicion. Let us say at once that such was the plight of the physician, worried to the point of dismay by the visible change that he had observed in his father during the past month.

One afternoon in November Chaffin had appeared, in a state of great agitation. He had told his son that the marquis had made him the scapegoat of his follies. He had inveighed against the ingratitude of the grand seigneur, in whose service his life had been passed, had declared that he would accept nothing, not even the smallest pension, from that man, and had forbidden his name to be mentioned in his presence. Since then he had been wasting away in a melancholic state, the true causes of which were, on the one hand, terror lest his son should learn the real reason of his disgrace, and on the other hand the most violent and invincible remorse.

Landri's instinct had led him to the right conclusion. Chaffin was the anonymous informer. Enraged by the sudden collapse of his hopes, the loss of a commission which would have rounded out his fortune, and really convinced in his own mind that M. de Claviers would renounce the Jaubourg legacy, Chaffin had gone to Altona to strike another bargain with him, and to demand not one but two per cent of the four millions offered for the list of treasures preserved at Grandchamp. He agreed, in consideration of that sum, to induce the marquis to reopen the negotiations that had been instantly broken off by the legacy. Altona had accepted his offer.

Chaffin had in his possession a letter from Madame de Claviers to Jaubourg. He had opened it when he was only a tutor, nearly eighteen years before. Finding it on a table, in a package prepared for the post, he had yielded to an intense curiosity to learn the real relations between the friend of the family and the marchioness. That was the period at which the process of corruption already described began. Perhaps this discovery of the sin of his pupil's mother was the most virulent element in his moral degeneration. He had not used the paper, as he might have done, as the foundation of a lucrative system of blackmail. He was not ripe for such villainy. But he had not destroyed it, by reason of that sort of vague expectation which, in certain natures, outwardly sound but rotten at the core, is, as it were, the gestation of crime. He had, in fact, supplemented it by adding to it—these were the "other documents"—three notes from Jaubourg, pilfered from Landri's mother's desk. At the time the lovers had discovered, with dismay, the disappearance of Madame de Claviers' letter. They had both made cautious inquiry, and failing to learn anything, had attributed the loss to some irregularity on the part of the mail. The marchioness had not detected the second theft, which would have put her on the scent. Jaubourg had always suspected Chaffin. That was the meaning of the question, "What is he?" uttered in such distress on his death-bed.

That is the sort of man that the former tutor was: a scoundrel who lacked only a tempting opportunity. The bait of eighty thousand francs was the opportunity. He had written the anonymous letter himself, on his typewriter. He had placed it in an envelope with the other, the incriminating one, and despatched them both to the marquis. But although a greedy longing for gain, added to base and pitiless envy of the grand seigneur, had impelled him to do this disgraceful deed in an hour of madness, when the blow was dealt, his conscience of the earlier days, of the humble giver of lessons to worthy bourgeois, had begun to make itself heard. He could not banish from his thoughts the haunting image of M. de Claviers' face as he had seen it during the fortnight between his crime and his dismissal, so haggard, so ravaged by suffering! His handiwork terrified him, especially as the end sought—at such a price!—was not attained. Contrary to his expectation, the marquis went on paying his debts. Pictures, furniture, hangings, remained at Grandchamp. The eighty thousand francs Altona had promised him would never come to his hands.

There are not many criminals who, in the face of a useless crime, practise the calm philosophy of the assassin in the old story, who found only a single sou in his victim's pocket, and observed: "A hundred like this will make five francs!" The absolute inutility of his murderous villainy did not even afford Chaffin the semi-insensibility which might have come from the possession of that little fortune which, added to the store already accumulated, would have given him a round twenty thousand francs a year.

Tormented by this fixed idea, he was beginning to exhibit symptoms of the acute mental alienation which incessant, poignant regret for an irreparable sin is likely to cause in a man of some education. He could no longer eat or sleep, read or write, attend to any business or remain quiet. This agitation had not escaped the son's notice. The doctor had begun, almost automatically, to watch his father. He soon assured himself that these symptoms, so readily interpreted by an alienist, were caused by no physical disturbance. The cause was entirely mental—the physician said, cerebral. Almost automatically again, he had sought that cause.

One fact aroused his suspicion: he fancied that he observed a certain constraint in Professor Louvet's manner toward himself. As the head of the clinical staff he was in constant communication with the illustrious master of the Hôtel-Dieu. It had seemed to him, during the last weeks, that his chief's handshake was, not less cordial, but less unreserved, less familiar—in a word, that there was "a thorn" in it, as they would have said to each other in neurologists' parlance, in speaking of a common abrasion of the skin on a patient. Under any other circumstances Pierre would not have hesitated to question the professor. He did not do it. He had put together the two symptoms: the change in his master's manner to him, and the change in his father. He had drawn therefrom the conclusion, still automatically,—a profession like his ends by imparting a mechanical method, an instinctive gait, to the mind,—that the same fact was at the root of both. What fact? The quarrel between Chaffin and M. de Claviers, that old and very important patient of Louvet.

Pierre knew the marquis well, and although he had for him the antipathy of one social class for another, his innate sense of justice compelled him to esteem the great nobleman's greatness of soul. No, the châtelain of Grandchamp, who bestowed pensions on scores of old servants,—only two months since, his factotum was bewailing the fact at the family table!—had not parted, without weighty reasons, from one whom he had had in his service so many years.

What were those reasons? This question had been haunting the physician for several days, with such persistent and increasing distress, that it had occurred to him to seek an answer to it from Landri. He had been deterred by very diverse considerations. It will be recalled that their relations had never been perfectly simple. It was hard for the plebeian to ask the titled man if his, the plebeian's, father had been guilty of any offence contrary to honor. It was painful, too, for the physician, who had learned, in the delirium of a death-agony, the secret of an illegitimate birth, to seek a meeting with the son of the patient,—a meeting over which that consciousness would hover like a pall, especially as Pierre knew the terms of Jaubourg's will, and he did the child of that adulterous connection the justice to believe that M. de Claviers' acceptance of the legacy was torture to him.

One can imagine now the shock that it caused him, as he sat at work one afternoon in his little study, littered with books and pamphlets, when the maid handed him a card on which he read: "Comte de Claviers-Grandchamp." Fate, which is wont to teach such lessons, brought those two men face to face, who were born and reared under such widely different conditions, and who were undergoing, unknown to each other, the same universal ordeal of heredity, whereof one of the ancients said: "We shall be punished, either in our own persons or in those of our descendants, for the sins we have committed in this world." This is the principle, at once mysterious and natural, moral and physiological, which, by uniting persons of the same blood, creates the Family and Society.

Pierre's first impulse—so intolerable to him was the thought of his father's possible shame—was to reply: "I am not at home;" the second, to say: "Show him in." For the very reason that he was ignorant of the real reason for the dismissal of the steward of the Claviers-Grandchamps, he was unwilling to appear to dread a conversation with the future head of that house, and he thought:—

"What does he want of me? Doubtless he has come on account of the will. He is going to ask me not to mention what I may have heard and guessed. Those people have no appreciation of the honor of the medical profession. Bah! the honor of a bourgeois in the eyes of a noble!—A noble?" He laughed sneeringly,—"and of an officer with such ideas as this incompetent has, and as he exhibited in that stupid business of the inventory!"

As will be seen, his customary surly humor had already returned to this strange creature, who had always taken life against the grain, if we may so express it, because of his false position on the edge of a society in which he had no well-defined place. The result was that on entering that little room, the aspect of which disclosed the professional and intellectual ardor of its tenant, Landri de Claviers encountered the same armed glance that he had always known, behind the young scientist's gold-bowed spectacles. With his red beard and his irregular features, as if carved by a bill-hook, which gave him the aspect of a Tartar, the younger Chaffin really had, at that moment, the look of a very evil-minded man. This sensation was calculated to impart and did in fact impart a dryness, almost a bitterness of accent to Landri's first words, which were destined instantly to transform that conversation into a brief and fierce duel.

"I shall not detain you long," he began, after they had exchanged a few words of ordinary courtesy. Because of their former companionship and their difference in rank, they never knew how to address each other. They never called each other "monsieur," or by their names simply. "I have come upon a delicate, a very delicate errand. But the question I have come to ask is not put to the man, but to the physician who attended Monsieur Jaubourg."

He had the strength to pronounce those two syllables without removing his eyes from the other, who could not restrain a contraction of his bushy eyebrows and a curl of his lip as he replied:—

"I am at your service so far as this question does not run counter to my duty as a physician. We have a duty of absolute silence, which you do not suspect," he continued with a peculiar bitterness: "nec visa, nec audita, nec intellecta[7] is the old form of the Hippocratic oath. It is still true."

"It is a very simple matter," rejoined Landri. "You are aware that Monsieur de Claviers is Monsieur Jaubourg's legatee. We have obtained proof that some papers of great importance were taken from his apartment during the last days of his illness. Well! I would be glad to have your word—"

"That I didn't take them?" the doctor hastily interrupted. "Don't tell me that you came here to ask me that," he continued with an outburst of anger; "I will not allow it."

"You might have let me finish my sentence," retorted Landri, more calmly, but very little more. Being absolutely ignorant of the inward tragedy—so like his own, alas!—of which Pierre Chaffin was the victim, this outbreak at the bare idea of a suspicion of dishonesty was inexplicable to him. He had said nothing to justify it, and being rendered so sensitive by his own suffering, he could not brook a reply uttered in such a tone. "I finish that sentence. I would be glad to have your word, not that you did not take the papers, but simply that no person, to your knowledge, entered Monsieur Jaubourg's bedroom during his illness,—besides the servants, Professor Louvet, and yourself, of course. It seems to me that there is nothing in that to cause any sensitiveness on your part. It is simply a matter of preventing suspicion from going astray. You should be the first to desire it."

"I have no answer to make to a question of that sort," said Pierre. He did not clearly discern his questioner's object. It was true that he would have no right to take offence at the question, if it had not been couched in terms too imperious and inquisitorial. The conclusion especially had irritated him. But as Landri had affected to speak in a very self-contained tone, almost ceremonious in its stiffness, he determined to meet his coldness with equal coldness. He would have been humiliated to appear less able to control his nerves, or less polished, than the young noble, and he added: "I do not admit that it is the duty of a physician to keep watch over his patient otherwise than professionally. I venture to assert that I treated Monsieur Jaubourg to the best of my ability, and that is all that his heirs have a right to concern themselves about with respect to me."

"It is not a question of keeping watch," Landri replied. "You compel me, in spite of myself, to make my questions more precise. Did you admit no stranger to the invalid's bedroom? For you did receive visitors, I know from Joseph."

"Visitors?" exclaimed the physician. "No one, except my father." He had no sooner pronounced the word, than he ejaculated the "Ah!" of one who suddenly grasps the situation. He was silent for a moment. Then, controlling himself with an effort, he continued, throwing out his breast and walking up to the other, with distorted face and breathing quickly: "I will satisfy you. I give you my word of honor that I admitted no one to Monsieur Jaubourg's bedroom,—no one, you understand; my word of honor, and it's the word of an honest man, again you understand! And that gives me the right to put a question to you, in my turn. For all you call yourself Monsieur le Comte de Claviers-Grandchamp, and I am simple Pierre Chaffin, we are no longer living under the old régime, and I don't know that you are entitled to come here, on your private authority, to question me like an examining magistrate. You told me that some one had stolen papers from Monsieur Jaubourg's, and you asked me if the person from whom I received a visit did not go into the room where the stolen papers were. That was equivalent to saying that you suspected that person of stealing them, and that person was my father. My question is this: Do you suspect my father, or do you not?"

"I will say, as you said just now, that I have no answer to make, having named no one," Landri retorted.

His irritation faded away in the face of evidence: he had before him in very truth an absolutely honest man. He had felt it in the vigor with which Pierre had asserted his honor, in the upheaval of his whole being, above all in his outcry of indignant surprise. And lo! a strange and melancholy sympathy stirred in his heart. The tone in which the son had spoken of his father echoed in the depths of his soul. It was like a sudden repetition of his own inward lament. He observed with dismay that, having come thither to obtain confirmation of one suspicion, his visit had aroused another, not in his own mind, but in that of the very person upon whom he had relied to discover the truth; and already it had ceased to be in his power to allay that suspicion.

"To decline to answer is to answer," said Pierre Chaffin. "So papers are missing from Monsieur Jaubourg's, valuable papers, no doubt, and you, and Monsieur de Claviers, I suppose, with you, accuse my father of the theft!"

"No valuable paper is missing from Monsieur Jaubourg's," replied Landri, "and, once more, we accuse no one."

"If it is not valuable papers that have disappeared," continued the physician, "it must be letters. And why do people steal letters? To sell them, threatening to make them public, for blackmail."

His habit of inductive reasoning began to work anew, and in that moment of supreme agony, he made use of what he knew to guess the rest. Letters had been stolen. What letters? Those which referred to the birth of the child of Jaubourg and Madame de Claviers. They were afraid of blackmail. What sort of blackmail? That which the will suggested. And he said aloud, changing from questioned to questioner, to suppliant rather, he trembled so with anxiety as he made this appeal to his playmate in childhood:—

"I gave you my word just now; give me your word that you did not believe that my father was capable of that.—You don't answer? Then it must be that you did believe it. And yet you and Monsieur de Claviers are not cruel. You believed that? Why? I must know. I must know everything, everything, everything, and first of all the real reason why my father and Monsieur de Claviers parted. I am a man, Landri, and I am addressing another man. What was the reason? Tell me."

"You are well aware that I was not here," Landri replied. "I know nothing positive."

"Yes or no, did you hear any talk of dishonesty?"

"I heard something said of confusion in Monsieur de Claviers' affairs," said Landri. "But I give you my word on this—that this matter of Jaubourg's papers, as to which I wanted to obtain your testimony, had no connection whatever with the reasons that may have led Monsieur de Claviers to dispense with Monsieur Chaffin's services."

He was only too well aware, when he made this indefinite reply, that the craving for knowledge with which the other was consumed demanded a reply of a very different tenor. But he could not answer yes or no. He had suffered too keenly when he learned of his mother's sin to allow his lips to form words which should inform a son of his father's crime. Nor would his sense of honor permit him to be lavish of denials. Indeed, what was the use? When he decided upon this step, he had had no means of divining that Pierre's mind was already disturbed, so that he had immediately read into his question a meaning that was only too dear.