The Clique of Gold by Emile Gaboriau (polar express read aloud .TXT) 📕

It was exactly two years since Daniel and Henrietta had been parted by the foulest treachery,—two years since that fatal evening when the stupidly ironical voice of Count Ville-Handry had suddenly made itself heard near them under the old trees of the garden of the palace.

What had not happened since then? What unheard-of, most improbable events; what trials, what tribulations, what sufferings! They had endured all that the human heart can endure. There was not a day, so to say, in these two years, that had not brought them its share of grief and sorrow. How often both of them had despaired of the future! How many times they had sighed for death!

And yet, after all these storms, here they were reunited once more, in unspeakable happiness, forgetting every thing,—their enemies and the whole world, the anxieties of the past, and the uncertainty of the future.

They remained thus for a long time, holding each other closely, overcome with happiness, unable, as yet, to believe in the reality for which they had sighed so long, unable to utter a word, laughing and weeping in one breath.

Now and then they would move apart a little, throwing back the head in order the better to look at each other; then swiftly they would fold each other again closely in their arms, as if they were afraid they might be separated anew.

“How they love each other!” whispered Mrs. Bertolle in her brother’s ear,—“the poor young people!”

And big tears rolled down her cheeks, while the old dealer, not less touched, but showing his emotion differently, closed his hands fiercely, and said,—

“All right, all right! They will have to pay for everything.”

Daniel, in the meantime, was recovering himself gradually; and reason once more got the better of his feelings. He led Henrietta to an arm- chair at the corner of the fireplace, and sitting down in front of her, after having taken her hands in his own, he asked her to give him a faithful account of the two terrible years that had just come to an end.

She had to tell him everything,—her humiliations in her father’s house, the insults she had endured, the wicked slanders by which her honor had been tainted, the incomprehensible blindness of the count, the surly provocations of her step-mother, the horrible attentions of Sir Thorn; in fine, the whole abominable plot which had been formed, as she found out too late, for the purpose of driving her to seek safety in flight, and to give herself up to Maxime de Brevan.

Trembling with rage, livid, his eyes bloodshot, Daniel suddenly let go Henrietta’s hands, and exclaimed in a half-smothered voice,—

“Ah, Henrietta! your father deserved—Wretched old man! to abandon his child to the mercy of such miserable wretches!”

And, when the poor girl looked at him imploringly, he replied,—

“Be it so! I will say nothing more of the count. He is your father, and that is enough.”

Then he added coldly,—

“But that M. Thomas Elgin, I swear by God he shall die by my hand; and as to Sarah Brandon”—

He was interrupted by the old dealer, who tapped him lightly on the shoulder, and said with an indescribable smile,—

“You shall not do that honor to the Hon. M. Elgin, M. Champcey. People like him do not die by the sword of honest men.”

In the meantime Henrietta had resumed her history, and spoke of her surprise and amazement when she reached that bare room in Water Street, with its scanty second-hand furniture.

“And yet, Henrietta,” here broke in Daniel, “I had handed that man all my money to be placed at your disposal in case of any accident.”

“What!” exclaimed the old dealer, “you had”—

He did not finish, but looked at the young officer with an utterly amazed air, as if he were an improbable phenomenon, never seen before.

Daniel shook his head sadly.

“Yes,” he said, “I know it was an insane thing. But it was less insane than to intrust my betrothed to his care. I believed in the friendship of that man.”

“And besides,” remarked Mrs. Bertolle, “how could you suppose such atrocious treachery? There are crimes which honest hearts never even conceive.”

Henrietta continued, describing her sensations when she found herself for the first time in her life harassed by want, destitution, hunger. But, when she came to the disgusting ill-treatment she received at the hands of the concierge’s wife, Daniel cried out,—

“Stop!”

And, fearfully excited, he asked her,—

“Did I hear right? Did you say the concierge of that house in Water Street, and his wife, were called Chevassat?”

“Yes, why?”

“Because Maxime de Brevan’s real name is Justin Chevassat.”

Papa Ravinet started up as if he had been shot.

“What,” he said, “you know that?”

“I learned it three months ago. I also know that my friend, the proud nobleman, Maxime de Brevan, who has been received in the most aristocratic