“If we have David on the jail register at six o’clock, come round to M. Gannerac’s at nine, and we will settle your business,” said Petit-Claud peremptorily.
“Agreed. Your will shall be done, governor,” said Cérizet.
Cérizet understood the art of washing paper, a dangerous art for the Treasury. He washed out Lucien’s four lines and replaced them, imitating the handwriting with a dexterity which augured ill for his own future:—
“My dear David—Your business is settled; you need not fear to go to the prefect. You can go out at sunset. I will come to meet you and tell you what to do at the prefecture.—Your brother,
At noon Lucien wrote to David, telling him of his evening’s success. The prefect would be sure to lend his influence, he said; he was full of enthusiasm over the invention, and was drawing up a report that very day to send to the Government. Marion carried the letter to Basine, taking some of Lucien’s linen to the laundry as a pretext for the errand.
Petit-Claud had told Cérizet that a letter would in all probability be sent. Cérizet called for Mlle. Signol, and the two walked by the Charente. Henriette’s integrity must have held out for a long while, for the walk lasted for two hours. A whole future of happiness and ease and the interests of a child were at stake, and Cérizet asked a mere trifle of her. He was very careful besides to say nothing of the consequences of that trifle. She was only to carry a letter and a message, that was all; but it was the greatness of the reward for the trifling service that frightened Henriette. Nevertheless, Cérizet gained her consent at last; she would help him in his stratagem.
At five o’clock Henriette must go out and come in again, telling Basine Clerget that Mme. Séchard wanted to speak to her at once. Fifteen minutes after Basine’s departure she must go upstairs, knock at the door of the inner room, and give David the forged note. That was all. Cérizet looked to chance to manage the rest.
For the first time in twelve months, Eve felt the iron grasp of necessity relax a little. She began at last to hope. She, too, would enjoy her brother’s visit; she would show herself abroad on the arm of a man fêted in his native town, adored by the women, beloved by the proud Comtesse du Châtelet. She dressed herself prettily, and proposed to walk out after dinner with her brother to Beaulieu. In September all Angoulême comes out at that hour to breathe the fresh air.
“Oh! that is the beautiful Mme. Séchard,” voices said here and there.
“I should never have believed it of her,” said a woman.
“The husband is in hiding, and the wife walks abroad,” said Mme. Postel for young Mme. Séchard’s benefit.
“Oh, let us go home,” said poor Eve; “I have made a mistake.”
A few minutes before sunset, the sound of a crowd rose from the steps that lead down to L’Houmeau. Apparently some crime had been committed, for persons coming from L’Houmeau were talking among themselves. Curiosity drew Lucien and Eve towards the steps.
“A thief has just been arrested no doubt, the man looks as pale as death,” one of these passersby said to the brother and sister. The crowd grew larger.
Lucien and Eve watched a group of some thirty children, old women and men, returning from work, clustering about the gendarmes, whose gold-laced caps gleamed above the heads of the rest. About a hundred persons followed the procession, the crowd gathering like a storm cloud.
“Oh! it is my husband!” Eve cried out.
“David!” exclaimed Lucien.
“It is his wife,” said voices, and the crowd made way.
“What made you come out?” asked Lucien.
“Your letter,” said David, haggard and white.
“I knew it!” said Eve, and she fainted away. Lucien raised his sister, and with the help of two strangers he carried her home; Marion laid her in bed, and Kolb rushed off for a doctor. Eve was still insensible when the doctor arrived; and Lucien was obliged to confess to his mother that he was the cause of David’s arrest; for he, of course, knew nothing of the forged letter and Cérizet’s stratagem. Then he went up to his room and locked himself in, struck dumb by the malediction in his mother’s eyes.
In the dead of night he wrote one more letter amid constant interruptions; the reader can divine the agony of the writer’s mind from those phrases, jerked out, as it were, one by one:—
“My beloved sister—We have seen each other for the last time. My resolution is final, and for this reason. In many families there is one unlucky member, a kind of disease in their midst. I am that unlucky one in our family. The observation is not mine; it was made at a friendly supper one evening at the Rocher de Cancale by a diplomat who has seen a great deal of the world. While we laughed and joked, he explained the reason why some young lady or some other remained unmarried, to the astonishment of the world—it was ‘a touch of her father,’ he said, and with that he unfolded his theory of inherited weaknesses. He told us how such and such a family would have flourished but for the mother; how it was that a son had ruined his father, or a father had stripped his children of prospects and respectability. It was said laughingly, but we thought of so many cases in point in ten minutes that I was struck with the theory. The amount of truth in it furnished all sorts of wild paradoxes,
