Chapter II.7
"Cesarine!" Mme. de Thaller called, in a voice which sounded at once like a prayer and a threat.
"I am going to dress myself, mamma," she answered. "Come back!"
"So that you can scold me if I am not ready when you want to go? Thank you, no."
"I command you to come back, Cesarine." No answer. She was far already.
Mme. de Thaller closed the door of the little parlor, and returning to take a seat by M. de Tregars, "What a singular girl!" she said.
Meantime he was watching in the glass what was going on in the other room. The suspicious-looking man was there still, and alone. A servant had brought him pen, ink and paper; and he was writing rapidly.
"How is it that they leave him there alone?" wondered Marius.
And he endeavored to find upon the features of the baroness an answer to the confused presentiments which agitated his brain. But there was no longer any trace of the emotion which she had manifested when taken unawares. Having had time for reflection, she had composed for herself an impenetrable countenance. Somewhat surprised at M. de Tregars' silence, "I was saying," she repeated, "that Cesarine is a strange girl."
Still absorbed by the scene in the grand parlor, "Strange, indeed!" he answered.
"And such is," said the baroness with a sigh, "the result of M. de Thaller's weakness, and above all of my own.
"We have no child but Cesarine; and it was natural that we should spoil her. Her fancy has been, and is still, our only law. She has never had time to express a wish: she is obeyed before she has spoken."
She sighed again, and deeper than the first time. "You have just seen," she went on, "the results of that insane education. And yet it would not do to trust appearances. Cesarine, believe me, is not as extravagant as she seems. She possesses solid qualities,--of those which a man expects of the woman who is to be his wife."
Without taking his eyes off the glass, "I believe you madame," said M. de Tregars.
"With her father, with me especially, she is capricious, wilful, and violent; but, in the hands of the husband of her choice, she would be like wax in the hands of the modeler."
The man in the parlor had finished his letter, and, with an equivocal smile, was reading it over.
"Believe me, madame," replied M. de Tregars, "I have perfectly understood how much naive boasting there was in all that Mlle. Cesarine told me."
"Then, really, you do not judge her too severely?"
"Your heart has not more indulgence for her than my own."
"And yet it is from you that her first real sorrow comes."
"From me?"
The baroness shook her head in a melancholy way, to convey an idea of her maternal affection and anxiety.
"Yes, from you, my dear marquis," she replied, "from you alone. On the very day you entered this house, Cesarine's whole nature changed."
Having read his letter over, the man in the grand parlor had folded it, and slipped it into his pocket, and, having left his seat, seemed to be waiting for something. M. de Tregars was following, in the glass, his every motion, with the most eager curiosity. And nevertheless, as he felt the absolute necessity of saying something, were it only to avoid attracting the attention of the baroness, "What!" he said, "Mlle. Cesarine's nature did change, then?"
"In one night. Had she not met the hero of whom every girl dreams? --a man of thirty, bearing one of the oldest names in France."
She stopped, expecting an answer, a word, an exclamation. But, as M. de Tregars said nothing, "Did you never notice any thing then?" she asked.
"Nothing."
"And suppose I were to tell you myself, that my poor Cesarine, alas! --loves you?"
M. de Tregars started. Had he been less occupied with the personage in the grand parlor, he would certainly not have allowed the conversation to drift in this channel. He understood his mistake; and, in an icy tone, "Permit me, madame," he said, "to believe that you are jesting."
"And suppose it were the truth."
"It would make me unhappy in the extreme."
"Sir!"
"For the reason which I have already told you, that I love Mlle. Gilberte Favoral with the deepest and the purest love, and that for the past three years she has been, before God, my affianced bride."
Something like a flash of anger passed over Mme. de Thaller's eyes. "And I," she exclaimed,--"I tell you that this marriage is senseless."
"I wish it were still more so, that I might the better show to Gilberte how dear she is to me."
Calm in appearance, the baroness was scratching with her nails the satin of the chair on which she was sitting.
"Then," she went on, "your resolution is settled."
"Irrevocably."
"Still, now, come, between us who are no longer children, suppose M. de Thaller were to double Cesarine's dowry, to treble it?"
An expression of intense disgust contracted the manly features of Marius de Tregars.
"Ah! not another word, madame," he interrupted.
There was no hope left. Mme. de Thaller fully realized it by the tone in which he spoke. She remained pensive for over a minute, and suddenly, like a person who has finally made up her mind, she rang.
A footman appeared.
"Do what I told you!" she ordered.
And as soon as the footman had gone, turning to M. de Tregars, "Alas!" she said, "who would have thought that I would curse the day when you first entered our house?"
But, whilst, she spoke, M. de Tregars noticed in the glass the result of the order she had just given.
The footman walked into the grand parlor, spoke a few words; and at once the man with the alarming countenance put on his hat and went out.
"This is very strange!" thought M. de Tregars. Meantime, the baroness was going on, "If your intentions are to that point irrevocable, how is it that you are here? You have too much experience of the world not to have understood, this morning, the object of my visit and of my allusions."
Fortunately, M. de Tregars' attention was no longer drawn by the proceedings in the next room. The decisive moment had come: the success of the game he was playing would, perhaps, depend upon his coolness and self-command.
"It is because I did understand, madame, and even better than you suppose, that I am here."
"Indeed!"
"I came, expecting to deal with M. de Thaller alone. I have been compelled, by what has happened, to alter my intentions. It is to you that I must speak first."
Mme. de Thaller continued to manifest the same tranquil assurance; but she stood up. Feeling the approach of the storm, she wished to be up, and ready to meet it.
"You honor me," she said with an ironical smile.
There was, henceforth, no human power capable of turning Marius de Tregars from the object he had in view.
"It is to you I shall speak," he repeated, "because, after you have heard me, you may perhaps judge that it is your interest to join me in endeavoring to obtain from your husband what I ask, what I demand, what I must have."
With an air of surprise marvelously well simulated, if it was not real, the baroness was looking at him.
"My father," he proceeded to say, "the Marquis de Tregars, was once rich: he had several millions. And yet when I had the misfortune of losing him, three years ago, he was so thoroughly ruined, that to relieve the scruples of his honor, and to make his death easier, I gave up to his creditors all I had in the world. What had become of my father's fortune? What filter had been administered to him to induce him to launch into hazardous speculations,--he an old Breton gentleman, full, even to absurdity, of the most obstinate prejudices of the nobility? That's what I wished to ascertain.
"And now, madame, I--have ascertained."
She was a strong-minded woman, the Baroness de Thaller. She had had so many adventures in her life, she had walked on the very edge of so many precipices, concealed so many anxieties, that danger was, as it were, her element, and that, at the decisive moment of an almost desperate game, she could remain smiling like those old gamblers whose face never betrays their terrible emotion at the moment when they risk their last stake. Not a muscle of her face moved; and it was with the most imperturbable calm that she said, "Go on, I am listening: it must be quite interesting."
That was not the way to propitiate M. de Tregars. He resumed, in a brief and harsh tone, "When my father died, I was young. I did not know then what I have learned since,--that to contribute to insure the impunity of knaves is almost to make one's self their accomplice. And the victim who says nothing and submits, does contribute to it. The honest man, on the contrary, should speak, and point out to others the trap into which he has fallen, that they may avoid it."
The baroness was listening with the air of a person who is compelled by politeness to hear a tiresome story.
"That is a rather gloomy preamble," she said. M. de Tregars took no notice of the interruption.
"At all times," he went on, "my father seemed careless of his affairs: that affectation, he thought, was due to the name he bore. But his negligence was only apparent. I might mention things of him that would do honor to the most methodical tradesman. He had, for instance, the habit of preserving all the letters of any importance which he received. He left twelve or fifteen boxes full of such. They were carefully classified; and many bore upon their margin a few notes indicating what answer had been made to them."
Half suppressing a yawn, "That is order," said the baroness, "if I know any thing about it."
"At the first moment, determined not to stir up the past, I attached no importance to