“What!”
“Why, certainly! Was it a safe thing to have always near him that bastard, a daughter, whom he introduced into the house at the end of five years of married life, and who, were it not for me, might have led him into some act of folly?”
Then she explained how her affairs stood. The arrangement on the occasion of her marriage was that the property of each party should be separate.22 The amount of her inheritance was three hundred thousand francs. M. Dambreuse had guaranteed by the marriage contract that in the event of her surviving him, she should have an income of fifteen thousand francs a year, together with the ownership of the mansion. But a short time afterwards he had made a will by which he gave her all he possessed, and this she estimated, so far as it was possible to ascertain just at present, at over three millions.
Frederick opened his eyes widely.
“It was worth the trouble, wasn’t it? However, I contributed to it! It was my own property I was protecting; Cécile would have unjustly robbed me of it.”
“Why did she not come to see her father?”
As he asked her this question Madame Dambreuse eyed him attentively; then, in a dry tone:
“I haven’t the least idea! Want of heart, probably! Oh! I know what she is! And for that reason she won’t get a farthing from me!”
She had not been very troublesome, he pointed out; at any rate, since her marriage.
“Ha! her marriage!” said Madame Dambreuse, with a sneer. And she grudged having treated only too well this stupid creature, who was jealous, self-interested, and hypocritical. “All the faults of her father!” She disparaged him more and more. There was never a person with such profound duplicity, and with such a merciless disposition into the bargain, as hard as a stone—“a bad man, a bad man!”
Even the wisest people fall into errors. Madame Dambreuse had just made a serious one through this overflow of hatred on her part. Frederick, sitting opposite her in an easy chair, was reflecting deeply, scandalised by the language she had used.
She arose and knelt down beside him.
“To be with you is the only real pleasure! You are the only one I love!”
While she gazed at him her heart softened, a nervous reaction brought tears into her eyes, and she murmured:
“Will you marry me?”
At first he thought he had not understood what she meant. He was stunned by this wealth.
She repeated in a louder tone:
“Will you marry me?”
At last he said with a smile:
“Have you any doubt about it?”
Then the thought forced itself on his mind that his conduct was infamous, and in order to make a kind of reparation to the dead man, he offered to watch by his side himself. But, feeling ashamed of this pious sentiment, he added, in a flippant tone:
“It would be perhaps more seemly.”
“Perhaps so, indeed,” she said, “on account of the servants.”
The bed had been drawn completely out of the alcove. The nun was near the foot of it, and at the head of it sat a priest, a different one, a tall, spare man, with the look of a fanatical Spaniard. On the night-table, covered with a white cloth, three wax-tapers were burning.
Frederick took a chair, and gazed at the corpse.
The face was as yellow as straw. At the corners of the mouth there were traces of bloodstained foam. A silk handkerchief was tied around the skull, and on the breast, covered with a knitted waistcoat, lay a silver crucifix between the two crossed hands.
It was over, this life full of anxieties! How many journeys had he not made to various places? How many rows of figures had he not piled together? How many speculations had he not hatched? How many reports had he not heard read? What quackeries, what smiles and curvets! For he had acclaimed Napoleon, the Cossacks, Louis XVIII, 1830, the workingmen, every regime, loving power so dearly that he would have paid in order to have the opportunity of selling himself.
But he had left behind him the estate of La Fortelle, three factories in Picardy, the woods of Crancé in the Yonne, a farm near Orléans, and a great deal of personal property in the form of bills and papers.
Frederick thus made an estimate of her fortune; and it would soon, nevertheless, belong to him! First of all, he thought of “what people would say”; then he asked himself what present he ought to make to his mother, and he was concerned about his future equipages, and about employing an old coachman belonging to his own family as the doorkeeper. Of course, the livery would not be the same. He would convert the large reception-room into his own study. There was nothing to prevent him by knocking down three walls from setting up a picture-gallery on the second-floor. Perhaps there might be an opportunity for introducing into the lower portion of the house a hall for Turkish baths. As for M. Dambreuse’s office, a disagreeable spot, what use could he make of it?
These reflections were from time to time rudely interrupted by the sounds made by the priest in blowing his nose, or by the good sister in settling the fire.
But the actual facts showed that his thoughts rested on a solid foundation. The corpse was there. The eyelids had reopened, and the pupils, although steeped in clammy gloom, had an enigmatic, intolerable expression.
Frederick fancied that he saw there a judgment directed against himself, and he felt almost a sort of remorse, for he had never any complaint to make against this man, who, on the contrary—
“Come, now! an old wretch!” and he looked at the dead man more closely in order to strengthen his mind, mentally addressing him thus:
“Well, what? Have I killed you?”
Meanwhile, the priest read his breviary; the nun, who sat motionless, had fallen asleep. The wicks of the three wax-tapers had grown longer.
For two hours could be heard
