File No. 113 by Émile Gaboriau (summer beach reads .txt) 📕

father to her child, Mme. Fauvel soon found him indispensable. She continually longed to see him, either to consult him concerning some step to be taken for Raoul’s benefit, or to impress upon him some good advice to be given.

Thus she was well pleased, when one day he requested the honor of being allowed to call upon her at her own house.

Nothing was easier than to introduce the Marquis of Clameran to her husband as an old friend of her family; and, after once being admitted, he might come as often as he chose.

Mme. Fauvel congratulated herself upon this arrangement.

Afraid to go to Raoul every day, and in constant terror lest her letters to him should be discovered, and his replies fall into her husband’s hands, she was delighted at the prospect of having news of him from Clameran.

For a month, things went on very smoothly, when one day the marquis confessed that Raoul was giving him a great deal of trouble. His hesitating, embarrassed manner frightened Mme. Fauvel. She thought something dreadful had happened, and that he was trying to break the bad news gently.

“What is the matter?” she said, turning pale.

“I am sorry to say,” replied Clameran, “that this young man has inherited all the pride and passions of his ancestors. He is one of those natures who stop at nothing, who only find incitement in opposition; and I can think of no way of checking him in his mad career.”

“Merciful Heaven! what has he been doing?”

“Nothing especially censurable; that is, nothing irreparable, thus far; but I am afraid of the future. He is unaware of the liberal allowance which you have placed in my hands for his benefit; and, although he thinks that I support him, there is not a single indulgence which he denies himself; he throws away money as if he were the son of a millionaire.”

Like all mothers, Mme. Fauvel attempted to excuse her son.

“Perhaps you are a little severe,” she said. “Poor child, he has suffered so much! He has undergone so many privations during his childhood, that this sudden happiness and wealth has turned his head; he seizes it as a starving man seizes a piece of bread. Is it surprising that he should refuse to listen to reason until hungry nature shall have been gratified? Ah, only have patience, and he will soon return to the path of sober duty. He has too noble a heart to do anything really wrong.”

“He has suffered so much!” was Mme. Fauvel’s constant excuse for Raoul. This was her invariable reply to M. de Clameran’s complaints of his nephew’s conduct.

And, having once commenced, he was now constant in his accusations against Raoul.

“Nothing restrains his extravagance and dissipation,” Louis would say in a mournful voice; “the instant a piece of folly enters his head, it is carried out, no matter at what cost.”

Mme. Fauvel saw no reason why her son should be thus harshly judged.

“You must remember,” she said in an aggrieved tone, “that from infancy he has been left to his own unguided impulses. The unfortunate boy never had a mother to tend and counsel him. You must remember, too, that he has never known a father’s guidance.”

“There is some excuse for him, to be sure; but nevertheless he must change his present course. Could you not speak seriously to him, madame? You have more influence over him than I.”

She promised, but forgot her good resolution when with Raoul. She had so little time to devote to him, that it seemed cruel to spend it in reprimands. Sometimes she would hurry from home for the purpose of following the marquis’s advice; but, the instant she saw Raoul, her courage failed; a pleading look from his soft, dark eyes silenced the rebuke upon her lips; the sound of his voice banished every anxious thought, and lulled her mind to the present happiness.

But Clameran was not a man to lose sight of the main object, in what he considered a sentimental wasting of time. He would have no compromise of duty.

His brother had bequeathed to him, as a precious trust, his son Raoul; he regarded himself, he said, as his guardian, and would be held responsible in another world for his welfare.

He entreated Mme. Fauvel to use her influence, when he found himself powerless in trying to check the heedless youth in his headlong career. She ought, for the sake of her child, to see more of him, study his disposition, and daily admonish him in his duty to himself and to her.

“Alas,” the poor woman replied, “that would be my heart’s desire. But how can I do it? Have I the right to ruin myself? I have other children, for whom I must be careful of my reputation.”

This answer appeared to astonish Clameran. A fortnight before, Mme. Fauvel would not have alluded to her other sons.

“I will think the matter over,” said Louis, “And perhaps when I see you next I shall be able to submit to you a plan which will reconcile everything.”

The reflections of a man of so much experience could not be fruitless. He had a relieved, satisfied look, when he called to see Mme. Fauvel on the following week.

“I think I have solved the problem,” he said.

“What problem?”

“The means of saving Raoul.”

He explained himself by saying, that as Mme. Fauvel could not, without arousing her husband’s suspicions, continue her daily visits to Raoul, she must receive him at her own house.

This proposition shocked Mme. Fauvel; for though she had been imprudent, even culpable, she was the soul of honor, and naturally shrank from the idea of introducing Raoul into the midst of her family, and seeing him welcomed by her husband, and perhaps become the friend of his sons. Her instinctive sense of justice made her declare that she would never consent to such an infamous step.

“Yes,” said the marquis, thoughtfully, “there is some risk; but then, it is the only chance of saving your child.”

She resisted with so much firmness and indignation that Louis was astonished, and for a time nonplussed; though he