"By the Messrs. Jottras, the bankers," said Mme. Favoral, "and also by M. Saint Pavin, the editor of 'the Financial Pilot.'"
"By all of them, evidently," interrupted Maxence, "even by his manager, M. de Thaller."
When a man is at the bottom of a precipice, what is the use of finding out how he has got there, - whether by stumbling over a stone, or slipping on a tuft of grass! And yet it is always our foremost thought. It was with an eager obstinacy that Mme. Favoral and her children ascended the course of their existence, seeking in the past the incidents and the merest words which might throw some light upon their disaster; for it was quite manifest that it was not in one day and at the same time that twelve millions had been subtracted from the Mutual Credit. This enormous deficit must have been, as usual, made gradually, with infinite caution at first, whilst there was a desire, and some hope, to make it good again, then with mad recklessness towards the end when the catastrophe had become inevitable.
"Alas!" murmured Mme. Favoral, "why did not Vincent listen to my presentiments on that ever fatal day when he brought M. de Thaller, M. Jottras, and M. Saint Pavin to dine here? They promised him a fortune."
Maxence and Mlle. Gilberte were too young at the time of that dinner to have preserved any remembrance of it; but they remembered many other circumstances, which, at the time they had taken place, had not struck them. They understood now the temper of their father, his perpetual irritation, and the spasms of his humor. When his friends were heaping insults upon him, he had exclaimed, "Be it so! let them arrest me; and to-night, for the first time in many years, I shall sleep in peace."
There were years, then, that he lived, as it were upon burning coals, trembling at the fear of discovery, and wondering, as he went to sleep each night, whether he would not be awakened by the rude hand of the police tapping him on the shoulder. No one better than Mme.
Favoral could affirm it.
"Your father, my children," she said, "had long since lost his sleep.
There was hardly ever a night that he did not get up and walk the room for hours."
They understood, now, his efforts to compel Mlle. Gilberte to marry M. Costeclar.
"He thought that Costeclar would help him out of the scrape," suggested Maxence to his sister.
The poor girl shuddered at the thought, and she could not help feeling thankful to her father for not having told her his situation; for would she have had the sublime courage to refuse the sacrifice, if her father had told her?.
"I have stolen! I am lost! Costeclar alone can save me; and he will save me if you become his wife."
M. Favoral's pleasant behavior during the siege was quite natural.
Then he had no fears; and one could understand how in the most critical hours of the Commune, when Paris was in flames, he could have exclaimed almost cheerfully, "Ah! this time it is indeed the final liquidation."
Doubtless, in the bottom of his heart, he wished that Paris might be destroyed, and, with it, the evidences of his crime. And perhaps he was not the only one to form that impious wish.
"That's why, then," exclaimed Maxence, - "that's why my father treated me so rudely: that's why he so obstinately persisted in closing the offices of the Mutual Credit against me."
He was interrupted by a violent ringing of the door-bell. He looked at the clock: ten o'clock was about to strike.
"Who can call so late?" said Mme. Favoral.
Something like a discussion was heard in the hall, - a voice hoarse with anger, and the servant's voice.
"Go and see who's there," said Gilberte to her brother.
It was useless; the servant appeared.
"It's M. Bertan," she commenced, "the baker - He had followed her, and, pushing her aside with his robust arm, he appeared himself.
He was a man about forty years of age, tall, thin, already bald, and wearing his beard trimmed close.
"M. Favoral?" he inquired.
"My father is not at home," replied Maxence.
"It's true, then, what I have just been told?"
"What?"
"That the police came to arrest him, and he escaped through a window."
"It's true," replied Maxence gently.
The baker seemed prostrated.
"And my money?" he asked.
"What money?"
"Why, my ten thousand francs! Ten thousand francs which I brought to M. Favoral, in gold, you hear? in ten rolls, which I placed there, on that very table, and for which he gave me a receipt. Here it is, - his receipt."
He held out a paper; but Maxence did not take it.
"I do not doubt your word, sir," he replied; "but my father's business is not ours."
"You refuse to give me back my money?"
"Neither my mother, my sister, nor myself, have any thing."
The blood rushed to the man's face, and, with a tongue made thick by anger, "And you think you are going to pay me off in that way?" he exclaimed. "You have nothing! Poor little fellow! And will you tell me, then, what has become of the twenty millions your father has stolen? for he has stolen twenty millions. I know it: I have been told so. Where are they?"
"The police, sir, has placed the seals over my fathers papers."
"The police?" interrupted the baker, "the seals? What do I care for that? It's my money I want: do you hear? Justice is going to take a hand in it, is it? Arrest your father, try him? What good will that do me? He will be condemned to two or three years' imprisonment. Will that give me a cent? He will serve out his time quietly; and, when he gets out of prison, he'll get hold of the pile that he's got hidden somewhere; and while I starve, he'll spend my money under my very nose. No, no! Things won't 'suit me that way.
It's at once that I want to be paid."
And throwing himself upon a chair his head back, and his legs stretched forward-
"And what's more," he declared, "I am not going out of here until I am paid."
It was not without the greatest efforts that Maxence managed to keep his temper.
"Your insults are useless, sir," he commenced.
The man jumped up from his seat.