“M. le Comte surely owes me so much,” smiled Lucien.
Cointet and Petit-Claud heard these farewell speeches.
“Well, well, we are done for now,” Cointet muttered in his confederate’s ear. Petit-Claud, thunderstruck by Lucien’s success, amazed by his brilliant wit and varying charm, was gazing at Françoise de la Haye; the girl’s whole face was full of admiration for Lucien. “Be like your friend,” she seemed to say to her betrothed. A gleam of joy flitted over Petit-Claud’s countenance.
“We still have a whole day before the prefect’s dinner; I will answer for everything.”
An hour later, as Petit-Claud and Lucien walked home together, Lucien talked of his success. “Well, my dear fellow, I came, I saw, I conquered! Séchard will be very happy in a few hours’ time.”
“Just what I wanted to know,” thought Petit-Claud. Aloud he said—“I thought you were simply a poet, Lucien, but you are a Lauzun too, that is to say—twice a poet,” and they shook hands—for the last time, as it proved.
“Good news, dear Eve,” said Lucien, waking his sister, “David will have no debts in less than a month!”
“How is that?”
“Well, my Louise is still hidden by Mme. du Châtelet’s petticoat. She loves me more than ever; she will send a favorable report of our discovery to the Minister of the Interior through her husband. So we have only to endure our troubles for one month, while I avenge myself on the prefect and complete the happiness of his married life.”
Eve listened, and thought that she must be dreaming.
“I saw the little gray drawing-room where I trembled like a child two years ago; it seemed as if scales fell from my eyes when I saw the furniture and the pictures and the faces again. How Paris changes one’s ideas!”
“Is that a good thing?” asked Eve, at last beginning to understand.
“Come, come; you are still asleep. We will talk about it tomorrow after breakfast.”
Cérizet’s plot was exceedingly simple, a commonplace stratagem familiar to the provincial bailiff. Its success entirely depends upon circumstances, and in this case it was certain, so intimate was Cérizet’s knowledge of the characters and hopes of those concerned. Cérizet had been a kind of Don Juan among the young workgirls, ruling his victims by playing one off against another. Since he had been the Cointet’s extra foreman, he had singled out one of Basine Clerget’s assistants, a girl almost as handsome as Mme. Séchard. Henriette Signol’s parents owned a small vineyard two leagues out of Angoulême, on the road to Saintes. The Signols, like everybody else in the country, could not afford to keep their only child at home; so they meant her to go out to service, in country phrase. The art of clear-starching is a part of every country housemaid’s training; and so great was Mme. Prieur’s reputation, that the Signols sent Henriette to her as apprentice, and paid for their daughter’s board and lodging.
Mme. Prieur was one of the old-fashioned mistresses, who consider that they fill a parent’s place towards their apprentices. They were part of the family; she took them with her to church, and looked scrupulously after them. Henriette Signol was a tall, fine-looking girl, with bold eyes, and long, thick, dark hair, and the pale, very fair complexion of girls in the South—white as a magnolia flower. For which reasons Henriette was one of the first on whom Cérizet cast his eyes; but Henriette came of “honest farmer folk,” and only yielded at last to jealousy, to bad example, and the treacherous promise of subsequent marriage. By this time Cérizet was the Cointet’s foreman. When he learned that the Signols owned a vineyard worth some ten or twelve thousand francs, and a tolerably comfortable cottage, he hastened to make it impossible for Henriette to marry anyone else. Affairs had reached this point when Petit-Claud held out the prospect of a printing office and twenty thousand francs of borrowed capital, which was to prove a yoke upon the borrower’s neck. Cérizet was dazzled, the offer turned his head; Henriette Signol was now only an obstacle in the way of his ambitions, and he neglected the poor girl. Henriette, in her despair, clung more closely to her seducer as he tried to shake her off. When Cérizet began to suspect that David was hiding in Basine’s house, his views with regard to Henriette underwent another change, though he treated her as before. A kind of frenzy works in a girl’s brain when she must marry her seducer to conceal her dishonor, and Cérizet was on the watch to turn this madness to his own account.
During the morning of the day when Lucien had set himself to reconquer his Louise, Cérizet told Basine’s secret to Henriette, giving her to understand at the same time that their marriage and future prospects depended upon the discovery of David’s hiding-place. Thus instructed, Henriette easily made certain of the fact that David was in Basine Clerget’s inner room. It never occurred to the girl that she was doing wrong to act the spy, and Cérizet involved her in the guilt of betrayal by this first step.
Lucien was still sleeping while Cérizet, closeted with Petit-Claud, heard the history of the important trifles with which all Angoulême presently would ring.
The Cointets’ foreman gave a satisfied nod as Petit-Claud came to an end. “Lucien surely has written you a line since he came back, has he not?” he asked.
“This is all that I have,” answered the lawyer, and he held out a note on Mme. Séchard’s writing-paper.
“Very well,” said Cérizet, “let Doublon be in wait at the Palet Gate about ten minutes before sunset; tell him to post his gendarmes, and you shall have our man.”
“Are you sure of your part of the business?” asked Petit-Claud, scanning Cérizet.
“I rely on chance,” said the ex-street boy, “and she is a saucy hussy; she does not like honest folk.
“You must succeed,” said Cérizet. “You have pushed me into this dirty business; you may as well
