From that morning war was declared.
From that day commenced in the Rue St. Gilles one of those domestic dramas which are still awaiting their Moliere, - a drama of distressing vulgarity and sickening realism, but poignant, nevertheless; for it brought into action tears, blood, and a savage energy.
M. Favoral thought himself sure to win; for did he not have the key of the cash, and is not the key of the cash the most formidable weapon in an age where every thing begins and ends with money?
Nevertheless, he was filled with irritating anxieties.
He who had just discovered so many things which he did not even suspect a few days before, he could not discover the source whence his son drew the money which flowed like water from his prodigal hands.
He had made sure that Maxence had no debts; and yet it could not be with M. Chapelain's monthly twenty francs that he fed his frolics.
Mme. Favoral and Gilberte, subjected separately to a skillful interrogatory, had managed to keep inviolate the secret of their mercenary labor. The servant, shrewdly questioned, had said nothing that could in any way cause the truth to be suspected.
Here was, then, a mystery; and M. Favoral's constant anxiety could be read upon his knitted brows during his brief visits to the house; that is, during dinner.
From the manner in which he tasted his soup, it was easy to see that he was asking himself whether that was real soup, and whether he was not being imposed upon. From the expression of his eyes, it was easy to guess this question constantly present to his mind.
"They are robbing me evidently; but how do they do it?"
And he became distrustful, fussy, and suspicious, to an extent that he had never been before. It was with the most insulting precautions that he examined every Sunday his wife's accounts. He took a look at the grocer's, and settled it himself every month: he had the butcher's bills sent to him in duplicate. He would inquire the price of an apple as he peeled it over his plate, and never failed to stop at the fruiterer's and ascertain that he bad not been deceived.
But it was all in vain.
And yet he knew that Maxence always had in his pocket two or three five-franc pieces.
"Where do you steal them?" he asked him one day.
"I save them out of my salary," boldly answered the young man.
Exasperated, M. Favoral wished to make the whole world take an interest in his investigations. And one Saturday evening, as he was talking with his friends, M. Chapelain, the worthy Desclavettes, and old man Desormeaux, pointing to his wife and daughter:
"Those d---d women rob me," he said, "for the benefit of my son; and they do it so cleverly that I can't find out how. They have an understanding with the shop-keepers, who are but licensed thieves; and nothing is eaten here that they don't make me pay double its value."
M. Chapelain made an ill-concealed grimace; whilst M. Desclavettes sincerely admired a man who had courage enough to confess his meanness.
But M. Desormeaux never minced things.
"Do you know, friend Vincent," he said, "that it requires a strong stomach to take dinner with a man who spends his time calculating the cost of every mouthful that his guests swallow?"
M. Favoral turned red in the face.
"It is not the expense that I deplore," he replied, but the duplicity. I am rich enough, thank Heaven! not to begrudge a few francs; and I would gladly give to my wife twice as much as she takes, if she would only ask it frankly."
But that was a lesson.
Hereafter he was careful to dissimulate, and seemed exclusively occupied in subjecting his son to a system of his invention, the excessive rigor of which would have upset a steadier one than he.
He demanded of him daily written attestations of his attendance both at the law-school and at the lawyer's office. He marked out the itinerary of his walks for him, and measured the time they required, within a few minutes. Immediately after dinner he shut him up in his room, under lock and key, and never failed, when he came home at ten o'clock to make sure of his presence.
He could not have taken steps better calculated to exalt still more Mme. Favoral's blind tenderness.
When she heard that Maxence had a mistress, she had been rudely shocked in her most cherished feelings. It is never without a secret jealousy that a mother discovers that a woman has robbed her of her son's heart. She had retained a certain amount of spite against him on account of disorders, which, in her candor, she had never suspected. She forgave him every thing when she saw of what treatment he was the object.