The man who can keep his head in such circumstances must be made of the same stuff as the convict who spent the night in robbing the Bibliotheque Royale of its gold medals, and repaired to his honest brother in the morning with a request to melt down the plunder."What is to be done?" cried the brother."Make me some coffee," replied the thief.Victurnien sank into a bewildered stupor, darkness settled down over his brain.Visions of past rapture flitted across the misty gloom like the figures that Raphael painted against a black background; to these he must bid farewell.Inexorable and disdainful, the Duchess played with the tip of her scarf.She looked in irritation at Victurnien from time to time; she coquetted with memories, she spoke to her lover of his rivals as if anger had finally decided her to prefer one of them to a man who could so change in one moment after twenty-eight months of love.
"Ah! that charming young Felix de Vandenesse, so faithful as he was to Mme.de Mortsauf, would never have permitted himself such a scene! He can love, can de Vandenesse! De Marsay, that terrible de Marsay, such a tiger as everyone thought him, was rough with other men; but like all strong men, he kept his gentleness for women.Montriveau trampled the Duchesse de Langeais under foot, as Othello killed Desdemona, in a burst of fury which at any rate proved the extravagance of his love.
It was not like a paltry squabble.There was rapture in being so crushed.Little, fair-haired, slim, and slender men loved to torment women; they could only reign over poor, weak creatures; it pleased them to have some ground for believing that they were men.The tyranny of love was their one chance of asserting their power.She did not know why she had put herself at the mercy of fair hair.Such men as de Marsay, Montriveau, and Vandenesse, dark-haired and well grown, had a ray of sunlight in their eyes."It was a storm of epigrams.Her speeches, like bullets, came hissing past his ears.Every word that Diane hurled at him was triple-barbed;she humiliated, stung, and wounded him with an art that was all her own, as half a score of savages can torture an enemy bound to a stake.
"You are mad!" he cried at last, at the end of his patience, and out he went in God knows what mood.He drove as if he had never handled the reins before, locked his wheels in the wheels of other vehicles, collided with the curbstone in the Place Louis-Quinze, went he knew not whither.The horse, left to its own devices, made a bolt for the stable along the Quai d'Orsay; but as he turned into the Rue de l'Universite, Josephin appeared to stop the runaway.
"You cannot go home, sir," the old man said, with a scared face; "they have come with a warrant to arrest you."Victurnien thought that he had been arrested on the criminal charge, albeit there had not been time for the public prosecutor to receive his instructions.He had forgotten the matter of the bills of exchange, which had been stirred up again for some days past in the form of orders to pay, brought by the officers of the court with accompaniments in the shape of bailiffs, men in possession, magistrates, commissaries, policemen, and other representatives of social order.Like most guilty creatures, Victurnien had forgotten everything but his crime.
"It is all over with me," he cried.
"No, M.le Comte, drive as fast as you can to the Hotel du Bon la Fontaine, in the Rue de Grenelle.Mlle.Armande is waiting there for you, the horses have been put in, she will take you with her."Victurnien, in his trouble, caught like a drowning man at the branch that came to his hand; he rushed off to the inn, reached the place, and flung his arms about his aunt.Mlle.Armande cried as if her heart would break; any one might have thought that she had a share in her nephew's guilt.They stepped into the carriage.A few minutes later they were on the road to Brest, and Paris lay behind them.Victurnien uttered not a sound; he was paralyzed.And when aunt and nephew began to speak, they talked at cross purposes; Victurnien, still laboring under the unlucky misapprehension which flung him into Mlle.Armande's arms, was thinking of his forgery; his aunt had the debts and the bills on her mind.
"You know all, aunt," he had said.
"Poor boy, yes, but we are here.I am not going to scold you just yet.
Take heart."
"I must hide somewhere."
"Perhaps....Yes, it is a very good idea.""Perhaps I might get into Chesnel's house without being seen if we timed ourselves to arrive in the middle of the night?""That will be best.We shall be better able to hide this from my brother.--Poor angel! how unhappy he is!" said she, petting the unworthy child.
"Ah! now I begin to know what dishonor means; it has chilled my love.""Unhappy boy; what bliss and what misery!" And Mlle.Armande drew his fevered face to her breast and kissed his forehead, cold and damp though it was, as the holy women might have kissed the brow of the dead Christ when they laid Him in His grave clothes.Following out the excellent scheme suggested by the prodigal son, he was brought by night to the quiet house in the Rue du Bercail; but chance ordered it that by so doing he ran straight into the wolf's jaws, as the saying goes.That evening Chesnel had been making arrangements to sell his connection to M.Lepressoir's head-clerk.M.Lepressoir was the notary employed by the Liberals, just as Chesnel's practice lay among the aristocratic families.The young fellow's relatives were rich enough to pay Chesnel the considerable sum of a hundred thousand francs in cash.
