“And the desire of fame may lead one to this!” she cried. “Oh! my angel, give up your career. Let us walk together along the beaten track; we will not try to make haste to be rich, David. … I need very little to be very happy, especially now, after all that we have been through. … And if you only knew—the disgrace of arrest is not the worst. … Look.”
She held out Lucien’s letter, and when David had read it, she tried to comfort him by repeating Petit-Claud’s bitter comment.
“If Lucien has taken his life, the thing is done by now,” said David; “if he has not made away with himself by this time, he will not kill himself. As he himself says, ‘his courage cannot last longer than a morning—’ ”
“But the suspense!” cried Eve, forgiving almost everything at the thought of death. Then she told her husband of the proposals which Petit-Claud professed to have received from the Cointets. David accepted them at once with manifest pleasure.
“We shall have enough to live upon in a village near L’Houmeau, where the Cointets’ paper mill stands. I want nothing now but a quiet life,” said David. “If Lucien has punished himself by death, we can wait so long as father lives; and if Lucien is still living, poor fellow, he will learn to adapt himself to our narrow ways. The Cointets certainly will make money by my discovery; but, after all, what am I compared with our country? One man in it, that is all; and if the whole country is benefited, I shall be content. There! dear Eve, neither you nor I were meant to be successful in business. We do not care enough about making a profit; we have not the dogged objection to parting with our money, even when it is legally owing, which is a kind of virtue of the countinghouse, for these two sorts of avarice are called prudence and a faculty of business.”
Eve felt overjoyed; she and her husband held the same views, and this is one of the sweetest flowers of love; for two human beings who love each other may not be of the same mind, nor take the same view of their interests. She wrote to Petit-Claud telling him that they both consented to the general scheme, and asked him to release David. Then she begged the jailer to deliver the message.
Ten minutes later Petit-Claud entered the dismal place. “Go home, madame,” he said, addressing Eve, “we will follow you.—Well, my dear friend” (turning to David), “so you allowed them to catch you! Why did you come out? How came you to make such a mistake?”
“Eh! how could I do otherwise? Look at this letter that Lucien wrote.”
David held out a sheet of paper. It was Cérizet’s forged letter.
Petit-Claud read it, looked at it, fingered the paper as he talked, and still taking, presently, as if through absence of mind, folded it up and put it in his pocket. Then he linked his arm in David’s, and they went out together, the order for release having come during the conversation.
It was like heaven to David to be at home again. He cried like a child when he took little Lucien in his arms and looked round his room after three weeks of imprisonment, and the disgrace, according to provincial notions, of the last few hours. Kolb and Marion had come back. Marion had heard in L’Houmeau that Lucien had been seen walking along on the Paris road, somewhere beyond Marsac. Some country folk, coming in to market, had noticed his fine clothes. Kolb, therefore, had set out on horseback along the highroad, and heard at last at Mansle that Lucien was traveling post in a calèche—M. Marron had recognized him as he passed.
“What did I tell you?” said Petit-Claud. “That fellow is not a poet; he is a romance in heaven knows how many chapters.”
“Traveling post!” repeated Eve. “Where can he be going this time?”
“Now go to see the Cointets, they are expecting you,” said Petit-Claud, turning to David.
“Ah, monsieur!” cried the beautiful Eve, “pray do your best for our interests; our whole future lies in your hands.”
“If you prefer it, madame, the conference can be held here. I will leave David with you. The Cointets will come this evening, and you shall see if I can defend your interests.”
“Ah! monsieur, I should be very glad,” said Eve.
“Very well,” said Petit-Claud; “this evening, at seven o’clock.”
“Thank you,” said Eve; and from her tone and glance Petit-Claud knew that he had made great progress in his fair client’s confidence.
“You have nothing to fear; you see I was right,” he added. “Your brother is a hundred miles away from suicide, and when all comes to all, perhaps you will have a little fortune this evening. A bona-fide purchaser for the business has turned up.”
“If that is the case,” said Eve, “why should we not wait awhile before binding ourselves to the Cointets?”
Petit-Claud saw the danger. “You are forgetting, madame,” he said, “that you cannot sell your business until you have paid M. Métivier; for a distress warrant has been issued.”
As soon as Petit-Claud reached home he sent for Cérizet, and when the printer’s foreman appeared, drew him into the embrasure of the window.
“Tomorrow evening,” he said, “you will be the proprietor of the Séchards’ printing-office, and then there are those behind you who have influence enough to transfer the license;” (then in a lowered voice), “but you have no mind to end in the hulks, I suppose?”
“The hulks! What’s that? What’s that?”
“Your letter to David was
