第126章

"Give it me, Lisbeth, and may God reward you! Give it me; I know where to go."

"But you will tell me, old wretch?"

"Yes, yes. Then I can wait eight months, for I have discovered a little angel, a good child, an innocent thing not old enough to be depraved."

"Do not forget the police-court," said Lisbeth, who flattered herself that she would some day see Hulot there.

"No.--It is in the Rue de Charonne," said the Baron, "a part of the town where no fuss is made about anything. No one will ever find me there. I am called Pere Thorec, Lisbeth, and I shall be taken for a retired cabinet-maker; the girl is fond of me, and I will not allow my back to be shorn any more."

"No, that has been done," said Lisbeth, looking at his coat.

"Supposing I take you there."

Baron Hulot got into the coach, deserting Mademoiselle Elodie without taking leave of her, as he might have tossed aside a novel he had finished.

In half an hour, during which Baron Hulot talked to Lisbeth of nothing but little Atala Judici--for he had fallen by degrees to those base passions that ruin old men--she set him down with two thousand francs in his pocket, in the Rue de Charonne, Faubourg Saint-Antoine, at the door of a doubtful and sinister-looking house.

"Good-day, cousin; so now you are to be called Thorec, I suppose? Send none but commissionaires if you need me, and always take them from different parts."

"Trust me! Oh, I am really very lucky!" said the Baron, his face beaming with the prospect of new and future happiness.

"No one can find him there," said Lisbeth; and she paid the coach at the Boulevard Beaumarchais, and returned to the Rue Louis-le-Grand in the omnibus.

On the following day Crevel was announced at the hour when all the family were together in the drawing-room, just after breakfast.

Celestine flew to throw her arms round her father's neck, and behaved as if she had seen him only the day before, though in fact he had not called there for more than two years.

"Good-morning, father," said Victorin, offering his hand.

"Good-morning, children," said the pompous Crevel. "Madame la Baronne, I throw myself at your feet! Good Heavens, how the children grow! they are pushing us off the perch--'Grand-pa,' they say, 'we want our turn in the sunshine.'--Madame la Comtesse, you are as lovely as ever," he went on, addressing Hortense.--"Ah, ha! and here is the best of good money: Cousin Betty, the Wise Virgin."

"Why, you are really very comfortable here," said he, after scattering these greetings with a cackle of loud laughter that hardly moved the rubicund muscles of his broad face.

He looked at his daughter with some contempt.

"My dear Celestine, I will make you a present of all my furniture out of the Rue des Saussayes; it will just do here. Your drawing-room wants furnishing up.--Ha! there is that little rogue Wenceslas. Well, and are we very good children, I wonder? You must have pretty manners, you know."

"To make up for those who have none," said Lisbeth.

"That sarcasm, my dear Lisbeth, has lost its sting. I am going, my dear children, to put an end to the false position in which I have so long been placed; I have come, like a good father, to announce my approaching marriage without any circumlocution."

"You have a perfect right to marry," said Victorin. "And for my part, I give you back the promise you made me when you gave me the hand of my dear Celestine--"

"What promise?" said Crevel.

"Not to marry," replied the lawyer. "You will do me the justice to allow that I did not ask you to pledge yourself, that you gave your word quite voluntarily and in spite of my desire, for I pointed out to you at the time that you were unwise to bind yourself."

"Yes, I do remember, my dear fellow," said Crevel, ashamed of himself.

"But, on my honor, if you will but live with Madame Crevel, my children, you will find no reason to repent.--Your good feeling touches me, Victorin, and you will find that generosity to me is not unrewarded.--Come, by the Poker! welcome your stepmother and come to the wedding."

"But you have not told us the lady's name, papa," said Celestine.

"Why, it is an open secret," replied Crevel. "Do not let us play at guess who can! Lisbeth must have told you."

"My dear Monsieur Crevel," replied Lisbeth, "there are certain names we never utter here--"

"Well, then, it is Madame Marneffe."

"Monsieur Crevel," said the lawyer very sternly, "neither my wife nor I can be present at that marriage; not out of interest, for I spoke in all sincerity just now. Yes, I am most happy to think that you may find happiness in this union; but I act on considerations of honor and good feeling which you must understand, and which I cannot speak of here, as they reopen wounds still ready to bleed----"

The Baroness telegraphed a signal to Hortense, who tucked her little one under her arm, saying, "Come Wenceslas, and have your bath!--Good-bye, Monsieur Crevel."

The Baroness also bowed to Crevel without a word; and Crevel could not help smiling at the child's astonishment when threatened with this impromptu tubbing.

"You, monsieur," said Victorin, when he found himself alone with Lisbeth, his wife, and his father-in-law, "are about to marry a woman loaded with the spoils of my father; it was she who, in cold blood, brought him down to such depths; a woman who is the son-in-law's mistress after ruining the father-in-law; who is the cause of constant grief to my sister!--And you fancy that I shall seem to sanction your madness by my presence? I deeply pity you, dear Monsieur Crevel; you have no family feeling; you do not understand the unity of the honor which binds the members of it together. There is no arguing with passion--as I have too much reason to know. The slaves of their passions are as deaf as they are blind. Your daughter Celestine has too strong a sense of her duty to proffer a word of reproach."

"That would, indeed, be a pretty thing!" cried Crevel, trying to cut short this harangue.