Diard was not always lucky;far from it.In three years he had dissipated three fourths of his fortune,but his passion for play gave him the energy to continue it.He was intimate with a number of men,more particularly with the roues of the Bourse,men who,since the revolution,have set up the principle that robbery done on a large scale is only a SMIRCH to the reputation,--transferring thus to financial matters the loose principles of love in the eighteenth century.Diard now became a sort of business man,and concerned himself in several of those affairs which are called SHADY in the slang of the law-courts.He practised the decent thievery by which so many men,cleverly masked,or hidden in the recesses of the political world,make their fortunes,--thievery which,if done in the streets by the light of an oil lamp,would see a poor devil to the galleys,but,under gilded ceilings and by the light of candelabra,is sanctioned.
Diard brought up,monopolized,and sold sugars;he sold offices;he had the glory of inventing the "man of straw"for lucrative posts which it was necessary to keep in his own hands for a short time;he bought votes,receiving,on one occasion,so much per cent on the purchase of fifteen parliamentary votes which all passed on one division from the benches of the Left to the benches of the Right.
Such actions are no longer crimes or thefts,--they are called governing,developing industry,becoming a financial power.Diard was placed by public opinion on the bench of infamy where many an able man was already seated.On that bench is the aristocracy of evil.It is the upper Chamber of scoundrels of high life.Diard was,therefore,not a mere commonplace gambler who is seen to be a blackguard,and ends by begging.That style of gambler is no longer seen in society of a certain topographical height.In these days bold scoundrels die brilliantly in the chariot of vice with the trappings of luxury.
Diard,at least,did not buy his remorse at a low price;he made himself one of these privileged men.Having studied the machinery of government and learned all the secrets and the passions of the men in power,he was able to maintain himself in the fiery furnace into which he had sprung.
Madame Diard knew nothing of her husband's infernal life.Glad of his abandonment,she felt no curiosity about him,and all her hours were occupied.She devoted what money she had to the education of her children,wishing to make men of them,and giving them straight-forward reasons,without,however,taking the bloom from their young imaginations.Through them alone came her interests and her emotions;consequently,she suffered no longer from her blemished life.Her children were to her what they are to many mothers for a long period of time,--a sort of renewal of their own existence.Diard was now an accidental circumstance,not a participator in her life,and since he had ceased to be the father and the head of the family,Juana felt bound to him by no tie other than that imposed by conventional laws.
Nevertheless,she brought up her children to the highest respect for paternal authority,however imaginary it was for them.In this she was greatly seconded by her husband's continual absence.If he had been much in the home Diard would have neutralized his wife's efforts.The boys had too much intelligence and shrewdness not to have judged their father;and to judge a father is moral parricide.
In the long run,however,Juana's indifference to her husband wore itself away;it even changed to a species of fear.She understood at last how the conduct of a father might long weigh on the future of her children,and her motherly solicitude brought her many,though incomplete,revelations of the truth.From day to day the dread of some unknown but inevitable evil in the shadow of which she lived became more and more keen and terrible.Therefore,during the rare moments when Diard and Juana met she would cast upon his hollow face,wan from nights of gambling and furrowed by emotions,a piercing look,the penetration of which made Diard shudder.At such times the assumed gaiety of her husband alarmed Juana more than his gloomiest expressions of anxiety when,by chance,he forgot that assumption of joy.Diard feared his wife as a criminal fears the executioner.In him,Juana saw her children's shame;and in her Diard dreaded a calm vengeance,the judgment of that serene brow,an arm raised,a weapon ready.
After fifteen years of marriage Diard found himself without resources.
He owed three hundred thousand francs and he could scarcely muster one hundred thousand.The house,his only visible possession,was mortgaged to its fullest selling value.A few days more,and the sort of prestige with which opulence had invested him would vanish.Not a hand would be offered,not a purse would be open to him.Unless some favorable event occurred he would fall into a slough of contempt,deeper perhaps than he deserved,precisely because he had mounted to a height he could not maintain.At this juncture he happened to hear that a number of strangers of distinction,diplomats and others,were assembled at the watering-places in the Pyrenees,where they gambled for enormous sums,and were doubtless well supplied with money.