II
Close upon the heels of the servant M. de Thaller came.
Tall, thin, stiff, he had a very small head, a flat face, pointednose, and long reddish whiskers, slightly shaded with silvery threads,falling half-way down his chest. Dressed in the latest style, hewore a loose overcoat of rough material, pantaloons that spreadnearly to the tip of his boots, a wide shirt-collar turned over alight cravat, on the bow of which shone a large diamond, and a tallhat with rolled brims. With a blinking glance, he made a rapidestimate of the dining-room, the shabby furniture, and the guestsseated around the table. Then, without even condescending to touchhis hat, with his large hand tightly fitted into a lavender glove,in a brief and imperious tone, and with a slight accent which heaffirmed was the Alsatian accent:
"I must speak with you, Vincent," said he to his cashier, "alone andat once."
M. Favoral made visible efforts to conceal his anxiety. "You see,"he commenced, "we are dining with a few friends, and--"
"Do you wish me to speak in presence of everybody?" interruptedharshly the manager of the Mutual Credit.
The cashier hesitated no longer. Taking up a candle from the table,he opened the door leading to the parlor, and, standing respectfullyto one side:
"Be kind enough to pass on, sir," said he: "I follow you."
And, at the moment of disappearing himself,
"Continue to dine without me," said he to his guests, with a lasteffort at self-control. "I shall soon catch up with you. This willtake but a moment. Do not be uneasy in the least."
They were not uneasy, but surprised, and, above all, shocked at themanners of M. de Thaller.
"What a brute!" muttered Mme. Desclavettes.
M. Desormeaux, the head clerk at the Department of Justice, was anold legitimist, much imbued with reactionary ideas.
"Such are our masters," said he with a sneer, "the high barons offinancial feudality. Ah! you are indignant at the arrogance of theold aristocracy; well, on your knees, by Jupiter! on your face,rather, before the golden crown on field of gules."
No one replied: every one was trying his best to hear.
In the parlor, between M. Favoral and M. de Thaller, a discussion ofthe utmost violence was evidently going on. To seize the meaningof it was not possible; and yet through the door, the upper panels ofwhich were of glass, fragments could be heard; and from time to timesuch words distinctly reached the ear as dividend, stockholders,deficit, millions, etc.
"What can it all mean? great heaven!" moaned Mme. Favoral.
Doubtless the two interlocutors, the director and the cashier, haddrawn nearer to the door of communication; for their voices, whichrose more and more, had now become quite distinct.
"It is an infamous trap!" M. Favoral was saying. "I should have beennotified--"
"Come, come," interrupted the other. "Were you not fully warned? didI ever conceal any thing from you?"
Fear, a fear vague still, and unexplained, was slowly takingpossession of the guests; and they remained motionless, their forksin suspense, holding their breath.
"Never," M. Favoral was repeating, stamping his foot so violentlythat the partition shook,--"never, never!"
"And yet it must be," declared M. de Thaller. "It is the only, thelast resource."
"And suppose I will not!"
"Your will has nothing to do with it now. It is twenty years agothat you might have willed, or not willed. But listen to me, andlet us reason a little."
Here M. de Thaller dropped his voice; and for some minutes nothingwas heard in the dining-room, except confused words, andincomprehensible exclamations, until suddenly,
"That is ruin," he resumed in a furious tone: "it is bankruptcy onthe last of the month."
"Sir," the cashier was replying,--"sir!"
"You are a forger, M. Vincent Favoral; you are a thief!"
Maxence leaped from his seat.
"I shall not permit my father to be thus insulted in his own house,"he exclaimed.
"Maxence," begged Mme. Favoral, "my son!"
The old lawyer, M. Chapelain, held him by the arm; but he struggledhard, and was about to burst into the parlor, when the door opened,and the director of the Mutual Credit stepped out.
With a coolness quite remarkable after such a scene, he advancedtowards Mlle. Gilberte, and, in a tone of offensive protection,
"Your father is a wretch, mademoiselle," he said; "and my duty shouldbe to surrender him at once into the hands of justice. On account ofyour worthy mother, however, of your father himself, above all, onyour own account, mademoiselle, I shall forbear doing so. But lethim fly, let him disappear, and never more be heard from."
He drew from his pocket a roll of bank-notes, and, throwing them uponthe table,
"Hand him this," he added. "Let him leave this very night. Thepolice may have been notified. There is a train for Brussels atfive minutes past eleven."
And, having bowed, he withdrew, no one addressing him a single word,so great was the astonishment of all the guests of this house,heretofore so peaceful.
Overcome with stupor, Maxence had dropped upon his chair. Mlle.Gilberte alone retained some presence of mind.
"It is a shame," she exclaimed, "for us to give up thus! That manis an impostor, a wretch; he lies! Father, father!"
M. Favoral had not waited to be called, and was standing up againstthe parlor-door, pale as death, and yet calm.
"Why attempt any explanations?" he said. "The money is gone; andappearances are against me."
His wife had drawn near to him, and taken his hand. "The misfortuneis immense," she said, "but not irreparable. We will sell everythingwe have."
"Have you not friends? Are we not here," insisted the others,--M.Desclavettes, M. Desormeaux, and M. Chapelain.
Gently he pushed his wife aside, and coldly.
"All we had," he said, "would be as a grain of sand in an ocean.But we have no longer anything; we are ruined."
"Ruined!" exclaimed M. Desormeaux,--"ruined! And where are theforty-five thousand francs I placed into your hands?"
He made no reply.
"And our hundred and twenty thousand francs?" groaned M. and Mme.Desclavettes.
"And my sixty thousand francs?" shouted M. Chapelain, with ablasphemous oath.
The cashier shrugged his shoulders. "Lost," he said, "irrevocablylost!"
Then their rage exceeded all bounds. Then they forgot that thisunfortunate man had been their friend for twenty years, that theywere his guests; and they commenced heaping upon him threats andinsults without name.
He did not even deign to defend himself.
"Go on," he uttered, "go on. When a poor dog, carried away by thecurrent, is drowning, men of heart cast stones at him from the bank.Go on!"
"You should have told us that you speculated," screamed M.Desclavettes.
On hearing these words, he straightened himself up, and with agesture so terrible that the others stepped back frightened.
"What!" said he, in a tone of crushing irony, "it is this eveningonly, that you discover that I speculated? Kind friends! Where,then, and in whose pockets, did you suppose I was getting theenormous interests I have been paying you for years? Where haveyou ever seen honest money, the money of labor, yield twelve orfourteen per cent? The money that yields thus is the money of thegaming table, the money of the bourse. Why did you bring me yourfunds? Because you were fully satisfied that I knew how to handlethe cards. Ah! If I was to tell you that I had doubled your capital,you would not ask how I did it, nor whether I had stocked the cards.You would virtuously pocket the money. But I have lost: I am athief. Well, so be it. But, then, you are all my accomplices. Itis the avidity of the dupes which induces the trickery of thesharpers."
Here he was interrupted by the servant coming in. "Sir," sheexclaimed excitedly, "O sir! the courtyard is full of police agents.They are speaking to the concierge. They are coming up stairs: Ihear them!"