Then," he resumed, "all is really over?"
"Of course."
"Then I have been duped like the rest, - like that poor Marquis de Tregars, whom you had made mad also. But he, at least saved his honor; whereas I - And I have no excuse; for I should have known.
I knew that you were but the bait which the Baron de Thaller held out to his victims."
He waited for an answer; but she maintained a contemptuous silence.
"Then you think," he said with a threatening laugh, "that it will all end that way?"
"What can you do?"
"There is such a thing as justice, I imagine, and judges too. I can give myself up, and reveal every thing."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"That would be throwing yourself into the wolf's mouth for nothing," she said. "You know better than any one else that my precautions are well enough taken to defy any thing you can do or say. I have nothing to fear."
"Are you quite sure of that?"
"Trust to me," she said with a smile of perfect security.
The former cashier of the Mutual Credit made a terrible gesture; but, checking himself at once, he seized one of the baroness's hands.
She withdrew it quickly, however, and, in an accent of insurmountable disgust, "Enough, enough!" she said.
In the adjoining closet Marius de Tregars could feel Mme. Zelie Cadelle shuddering by his side.
"What a wretch that woman is!" she murmured; "and he - what a base coward!"
The former cashier remained prostrated striking the floor with his head.
"And you would forsake me," he groaned, "when we are united by a past such as ours! How could you replace me? Where would you find a slave so devoted to your every wish?"
The baroness was getting impatient.
"Stop!" she interrupted, - "stop these demonstrations as useless as ridiculous."
This time he did start up, as if lashed with a whip and, double locking the door which communicated with the ante-chamber, he put the key in his pocket; and, with a step as stiff and mechanical as that of an automaton, he disappeared in the sleeping-room.
"He is going for a weapon," whispered Mme. Cadelle.
It was also what Marius thought.
"Run down quick," he said to Mme. Zelie. "In a cab standing opposite No.25, you will find Mlle. Gilberte Favoral waiting. Let her come at once."
And, rushing into the parlor, "Fly!" he said to Mme. Thaller.
But she was as petrified by this apparition.
"M. de Tregars!"
"Yes, yes, me. But hurry and go!"
And he pushed her into the closet.
It was but time. Vincent Favoral reappeared upon the threshold of the bedroom. But, if it was a weapon he had gone for, it was not for the one which Marius and Mme. Cadelle supposed. It was a bundle of papers which he held in his hand. Seeing M. de Tregars there, instead of Mme. de Thaller, an exclamation of terror and surprise rose to his lips. He understood vaguely what must have taken place; that the man who stood there must have been concealed in the glass closet, and that he had assisted the baroness to escape.
"Ah the miserable wretch!" he stammered with a tongue made thick by passion, "the infamous wretch! She has betrayed me; she has surrendered me. I am lost!"
Mastering the most terrible emotion he had ever felt, "No, no! you shall not be surrendered," uttered M. de Tregars.
Collecting all the energy that the devouring passion which had blasted his existence had left him, the former cashier of the Mutual Credit took one or two steps forward.
"Who are you, then?" he asked.
"Do you not know me? I am the son of that unfortunate Marquis de Tregars of whom you spoke a moment since. I am Lucienne's brother."
Like a man who has received a stunning blow, Vincent Favoral sank heavily upon a chair.
"He knows all," he groaned.
"Yes, all!"
"You must hate me mortally."
"I pity you."
The old cashier had reached that point when all the faculties, after being strained to their utmost limits, suddenly break down, when the strongest man gives up, and weeps like a child.
"Ah, I am the most wretched of villains!" he exclaimed.
He had hid his face in his hands; and in one second, - as it happens, they say, to the dying on the threshold of eternity, - he reviewed his entire existence.
"And yet," he said, "I had not the soul of a villain. I wanted to get rich; but honestly, by labor, and by rigid economy. And I should have succeeded. I had a hundred and fifty thousand francs of my own when I met the Baron de Thaller. Alas! why did I meet him? 'Twas he who first gave me to understand that it was stupid to work and save, when, at the bourse, with moderate luck, one might become a millionaire in six months."
He stopped, shook his head, and suddenly, "Do you know the Baron de Thaller?" he asked. And, without giving Marius time to answer, "He is a German," he went on, "a Prussian. His father was a cab-driver in Berlin, and his mother waiting-maid in a brewery. At the age of eighteen, he was compelled to leave his country, owing to some petty swindle, and came to take up his residence in Paris.
He found employment in the office of a stock-broker, and was living very poorly, when he made the acquaintance of a young laundress named Affrays, who had for a lover a very wealthy gentleman, the Marquis de Tregars, whose weakness was to pass himself off for a poor clerk. Affrays and Thaller were well calculated to agree.
They did agree, and formed an association, - she contributing her beauty; he, his genius for intrigue; both, their corruption and their vices. Soon after they met, she gave birth to a child, a daughter; whom she intrusted to some poor gardeners at Louveciennes, with the firm and settled intention to leave her there forever.
And yet it was upon this daughter, whom they firmly hoped never to see again, that the two accomplices were building their fortune.
