Other People's Money by Emile Gaboriau (ebook smartphone txt) 📕

alone, father, can give you the explanation you ask of us,” said Mlle. Gilberte.

The cashier of the Mutual Credit shook his head.  “Do you suppose, then, that I have not questioned him?  I found his letter this morning at the office.  At once I ran to his apartments, Rue Vivienne.  He had just gone out; and it is in vain that I called for him at Jottras’, and at the office of ‘The Financial Pilot.’  I found him at last at the bourse, after running three hours.  But I could only get from him evasive answers and vague explanations.  Of course he did not fail to say, that, if he does withdraw, it is because he despairs of ever succeeding in pleasing Gilberte.  But it isn’t so:  I know it; I am sure of it; I read it in his eyes.  Twice his lips moved as if he were about to confess all; and then he said nothing.  And the more I insisted, the more he seemed ill at ease, embarrassed, uneasy, troubled, the more he appeared to me like a man who has been threatened, and dares not brave the threat.”

He directed upon his children one of those obstinate looks which search the inmost depths of the conscience.

“If you have done any thing to drive him off,” he resumed, “confess it frankly, and I swear I will not reproach you.”

“We did not.”

“You did not threaten him?”

“No!”

M. Favoral seemed appalled.

“Doubtless you deceive me,” he said, “and I hope you do.  Unhappy children! you do not know what this rupture may cost you.”

And, instead of returning to his office, he shut himself up in that little room which he called his study, and only came out of it at about five o’clock, holding under his arm an enormous bundle of papers, and saying that it was useless to wait for him for dinner, as he would not come home until late in the night, if he came home at all, being compelled to make up for his lost day.

“What is the matter with your father, my poor children?” exclaimed Mme. Favoral.  “I have never seen him in such a state.”

“Doubtless,” replied Maxence, “the rupture with Costeclar is going to break up some combination.”

But that explanation did not satisfy him any more than it did his mother.  He, too, felt a vague apprehension of some impending misfortune.  But what?  He had nothing upon which to base his conjectures.  He knew nothing, any more than his mother, of his father’s affairs, of his relations, of his interests, or even of his life, outside the house.

And mother and son lost themselves in suppositions as vain as if they had tried to find the solution of a problem, without possessing its terms.

With a single word Mlle. Gilberte thought she might have enlightened them.

In the unerring certainty of the blow, in the crushing promptness of the result, she thought she could recognize the hand of Marius de Tregars.

She recognized the hand of the man who acts, and does not talk.  And the girl’s pride felt flattered by this victory, by this proof of the powerful energy of the man whom, unknown to all, she had selected.  She liked to imagine Marius de Tregars and M. Costeclar in presence of each other,—the one as imperious and haughty as she had seen him meek and trembling; the other more humble still than he was arrogant with her.

“One thing is certain,” she repeated to herself; “and that is, I am saved.”

And she wished the morrow to come, that she might announce her happiness to the very involuntary and very unconscious accomplice of Marius, the worthy Maestro Gismondo Pulei.

The next day M. Favoral seemed to have resigned himself to the failure of his projects; and, the following Saturday, he told as a pleasant joke, how Mlle. Gilberte had carried the day, and had managed to dismiss her lover.

But a close observer could discover in him symptoms of devouring cares.  Deep wrinkles showed along his temples; his eyes were sunken; a continued tension of mind contracted his features.  Often during the dinner he would remain motionless for several minutes, his fork aloft; and then he would murmur, “How is it all going to end?”

Sometimes in the morning, before his departure for his office, M. Jottras, of the house of Jottras and Brother, and M. Saint Pavin, the manager of “The Financial Pilot,” came to see him.  They closeted themselves together, and remained for hours in conference, speaking so low, that not even a vague murmur could be heard outside the door.

“Your father has grave subjects of anxiety, my children,” said Mme. Favoral:  “you may believe me,—me, who for twenty years have been trying to guess our fate upon his countenance.”

But the political events were sufficient to explain any amount of anxiety.  It was the second week of July, 1870; and the destinies of France trembled, as upon a cast of the dice, in the hands of a few presumptuous incapables.  Was it war with Prussia, or was it peace, that was to issue from the complications of a childishly astute policy?

The most contradictory rumors caused daily at the bourse the most violent oscillations, which endangered the safest fortunes.  A few words uttered in a corridor by Emile Ollivier had made a dozen heavy operators rich, but had ruined five hundred small ones.  On all hands, credit was trembling.

Until one evening when he came home,

“War is declared,” said M. Favoral.

It was but too true; and no one then had any fears of the result for France.  They had so much exalted the French army, they had so often said that it was invincible, that every one among the public expected a series of crushing victories.

Alas! the first telegram announced a defeat.  People refused to believe it at first.  But there was the evidence.  The soldiers had died bravely; but the chiefs had been incapable of leading them.

From that time, and with a vertiginous rapidity, from day to day, from hour to hour, the fatal news came crowding on.  Like a river that overflows its banks, Prussia was overrunning France.  Bazaine was surrounded at Metz; and the capitulation of Sedan capped the climax of so many disasters.

At last, on the 4th of September, the republic was proclaimed.

On the 5th, when the Signor Gismondo Pulei presented himself at Rue St. Gilles, his face bore such an expression of anguish, that Mlle. Gilberte could not help asking what was the matter.

He rose on that question, and, threatening heaven with his clinched fist,

“Implacable fate does not tire to persecute me,” he replied.  “I had overcome all obstacles:  I was happy:  I was looking forward to a future of fortune and glory.  No, the dreadful war must break out.”

For the worthy maestro, this terrible catastrophe was but a new caprice of his own destiny.