“What, then?”
“Oscar spoke ill of the Countess, and talked of monseigneur’s ailments—”
“Oscar?” cried Madame Moreau. “You are punished by your own act! A pretty viper you have nursed in your bosom! How often have I told you—”
“That will do,” said Moreau hoarsely.
At this instant Estelle and her husband detected Oscar huddled in a corner. Moreau pounced on the luckless boy like a kite on its prey, seized him by the collar of his olive-green coat, and dragged him into the daylight of a window.
“Speak! What did you say to monseigneur in the coach? What devil loosened your tongue, when you always stand moonstruck if I ask you a question? What did you do it for?” said the steward with terrific violence.
Oscar, too much scared for tears, kept silence, as motionless as a statue.
“Come and ask his Excellency’s pardon!” said Moreau.
“As if his Excellency cared about a vermin like him!” shrieked Estelle in a fury.
“Come—come to the château!” Moreau repeated.
Oscar collapsed, a lifeless heap on the floor.
“Will you come, I say?” said Moreau, his rage increasing every moment.
“No, no; have pity!” cried Oscar, who could not face a punishment worse than death.
Moreau took the boy by the collar and dragged him like a corpse across the courtyard, which rang with the boy’s cries and sobs; he hauled him up the steps and flung him howling, and as rigid as a post, in the drawing-room at the feet of the Count, who, having settled for the purchase of les Moulineaux, was just passing into the dining-room with his friends.
“On your knees, on your knees, wretched boy. Ask pardon of the man who has fed your mind by getting you a scholarship at college,” cried Moreau.
Oscar lay with his face on the ground, foaming with rage. Everybody was startled. Moreau, quite beside himself, was purple in the face from the rush of blood to his head.
“This boy is mere vanity,” said the Count, after waiting in vain for Oscar’s apology. “Pride can humble itself, for there is dignity in some self-humiliation.—I am afraid you will never make anything of this fellow.”
And the Minister passed on.
Moreau led Oscar away and back to his own house.
While the horses were being harnessed to the traveling chaise, he wrote the following letter to Madame Clapart:—
“Oscar, my dear, has brought me to ruin. In the course of his journey in Pierrotin’s chaise this morning he spoke of the flirtations of Madame la Comtesse to his Excellency himself, who was traveling incognito, and told the Count his own secrets as to the skin disease brought on by long nights of hard work in his various high offices.—After dismissing me from my place, the Count desired me not to allow Oscar to sleep at Presles, but to send him home. In obedience to his orders, I am having my horses put to my wife’s carriage, and Brochon, my groom, will take the little wretch home.
“My wife and I are in a state of despair, which you may imagine, but which I cannot attempt to describe. I will go to see you in a few days, for I must make my plans. I have three children; I must think of the future, and I do not yet know what to decide on, for I am determined to show the Count the value of seventeen years of the life of such a man as I. I have two hundred and sixty thousand francs, and I mean to acquire such a fortune as will allow me to be, some day, not much less than his Excellency’s equal. At this instant I feel that I could remove mountains and conquer insurmountable difficulties. What a lever is such a humiliating scene!
“Whose blood can Oscar have in his veins? I cannot compliment you on your son; his behavior is that of an owl. At this moment of writing he has not yet uttered a word in reply to my questions and my wife’s. Is he becoming idiotic, or is he idiotic already? My dear friend, did you not give him due injunctions before he started? How much misfortune you would have spared me by coming with him, as I begged you. If you were afraid of Estelle, you could have stayed at Moisselles. However, it is all over now. Farewell till we meet, soon.—Your faithful friend and servant,
At eight o’clock that evening Madame Clapart had come in from a little walk with her husband, and sat knitting stockings for Oscar by the light of a single dip. Monsieur Clapart was expecting a friend named Poiret, who sometimes came in for a game of dominoes, for he never trusted himself to spend an evening in a café. In spite of temperance, enforced on him by his narrow means, Clapart could not have answered for his abstinence when in the midst of food and drink, and surrounded by other men, whose laughter might have nettled him.
“I am afraid Poiret may have been and gone,” said he to his wife.
“The lodge-keeper would have told us, my dear,” replied his wife.
“She may have forgotten.”
“Why should she forget?”
“It would not be the first time she has forgotten things that concern us; God knows, anything is good enough for people who have no servants!”
“Well, well,” said the poor woman, to change the subject and escape her husband’s pin-stabs. “Oscar is at Presles by this time; he will be very happy in that beautiful place, that fine park—”
“Oh yes, expect great things!” retorted Clapart. “He will make hay there with a vengeance!”
“Will you never cease to be spiteful to that poor boy? What harm has he done you? Dear Heaven! if ever we are in easy circumstances we shall owe it to him perhaps, for he has a good heart.”
“Our bones will be gelatine long before that boy succeeds in the world!” said Clapart. “And he will have altered very considerably!—Why, you don’t know your own boy; he is a braggart, a
