“Pray, let me explain.”
“It would be useless. The fact speaks for itself. In six months your little store had disappeared; then came poverty and starvation, and at last, in the Hotel de Perou, your thoughts turned to suicide, and you were only saved by my old friend Tantaine.”
Paul felt his temper rising, for these plain truths were hard to bear; but fear lest he should lose his protector kept him silent.
“I admit everything, sir,” said he calmly. “I was a fool, and almost mad, but experience has taught me a bitter lesson. I am here today, and this fact should tell you that I have given up all my vain hallucinations.”
“Will you give up Rose Pigoreau?”
As this abrupt question was put to him, Paul turned pale with anger.
“I love Rose,” answered he coldly; “she believes in me, and has shared my troubles with courage, and one day she shall be my wife.”
Raising his velvet cap from his head, Mascarin bowed with an ironical air, saying, “Is that so? Then I beg a thousand pardons. It is urgent that you should have immediate employment. Pray, what can you do? Not much of anything, I fancy;—like most college bred boys, you can do a little of everything, and nothing well. Had I a son, and an enormous income, I would have him taught a trade.”
Paul bit his lip; but he knew the portrait was a true one.
“And now,” continued Mascarin, “I have come to your aid, and what do you say to a situation with a salary of twelve thousand francs?”
This sum was so much greater than Paul had dared to hope, that he believed Mascarin was amusing himself at his expense.
“It is not kind of you to laugh at me, under the present circumstances,” remarked he.
Mascarin was not laughing at him; but it was fully half an hour before he could prove this to Paul.
“You would like more proof of what I say,” said he, after a long conversation. “Very well, then; shall I advance your first month’s salary?” And as he spoke, he took a thousand-franc note from his desk, and offered it to Paul. The young man rejected the note; but the force of the argument struck him; and he asked if he was capable of carrying out the duties which such a salary doubtless demanded.
“Were I not certain of your abilities, I should not offer it to you,” replied Mascarin. “I am in a hurry now, or I would explain the whole affair; but I must defer doing so until tomorrow, when please come at the same hour as you did today.”
Even in his state of surprise and stupefaction, Paul felt that this was a signal for him to depart.
“A moment more,” said Mascarin. “You understand that you can no longer remain at the Hotel de Perou? Try and find a room in this neighborhood; and when you have done so, leave the address at the office. Goodbye, my young friend, until tomorrow, and learn to bear good fortune.”
For a few minutes Mascarin stood at the door of the office watching Paul, who departed almost staggering beneath the burden of so many conflicting emotions; and when he saw him disappear round the corner, he ran to a glazed door which led to his bed chamber, and in a loud whisper called, “Come in, Hortebise. He has gone.”
A man obeyed the summons at once, and hurriedly drew up a chair to the fire. “My feet are almost frozen,” exclaimed he; “I should not know it if anyone was to chop them off. Your room, my dear Baptiste, is a perfect refrigerator. Another time, please, have a fire lighted in it.”
This speech, however, did not disturb Mascarin’s line of thought. “Did you hear all?” asked he.
“I saw and heard all that you did.”
“And what do you think of the lad?”
“I think that Daddy Tantaine is a man of observation and powerful will, and that he will mould this child between his fingers like wax.”
III
The Opinion of Dr. Hortebise
Dr. Hortebise, who had addressed Mascarin so familiarly by his Christian name of Baptiste, was about fifty-six years of age, but he carried his years so well, that he always passed for forty-nine. He had a heavy pair of red, sensual-looking lips, his hair was untinted by gray, and his eyes still lustrous. A man who moved in the best society, eloquent in manner, a brilliant conversationalist, and vivid in his perceptions, he concealed under the veil of good-humored sarcasm the utmost cynicism of mind. He was very popular and much sought after. He had but few faults, but quite a catalogue of appalling vices. Under this Epicurean exterior lurked, it was reported, the man of talent and the celebrated physician. He was not a hardworking man, simply because he achieved the same results without toil or labor. He had recently taken to homoeopathy, and started a medical journal, which he named The Globule, which died at its fifth number. His conversation made all society laugh, and he joined in the ridicule, thus showing the sincerity of his views, for he was never able to take the round of life seriously. Today, however, Mascarin, well as he knew his friend, seemed piqued at his air of levity.
“When I asked you to come here today,” said he, “and when I begged you to conceal yourself in my bedroom—”
“Where I was half frozen,” broke in Hortebise.
“It was,” went on Mascarin, “because I desired your advice. We have started on a serious undertaking—an undertaking full of peril both to you and to myself.”
“Pooh! I have perfect confidence in you—whatever you do is done well, and you are not the man to fling away your trump cards.”
“True; but I may lose the game, after all, and then—”
The doctor merely shook a large gold locket that depended from his watch chain.
This movement seemed to annoy Mascarin a
