It was for Edouard's honor and his good name that Adeline took this last step, which could not restore her happiness but would rea.s.sure her concerning the future of her husband.

The young wife went at once to Madame Dolban's house and asked the concierge if she could see her.

"You come too late, madame," the man replied; "Madame Dolban died three days ago!"

"She is dead! Why, she wrote to me only nine days ago!"

"Oh! mon Dieu! that's the way things go in this world! A severe attack of fever, and then nervous collapse, and I don't know what else. It carried her off right away."

"All is lost," said Adeline as she turned away; "there is no hope now of convincing Edouard. Dufresne triumphs. He will drag him to his destruction!"

Discouraged by this fresh disappointment, the griefstricken Adeline made haste to leave Paris; she started with her daughter for Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, and as she sat in the carriage, with none but her child to witness her grief, she thought of the difference between that journey and the journey of the preceding year, and she wept over the rapidity with which her happiness had vanished.

XXII

THE SCHEMERS.--THE GAMBLERS.--THE SWINDLERS

Rid of his wife's presence, the sight of whom was still disturbing to his conscience, Edouard abandoned himself without restraint to Dufresne's advice, to his love for Madame de Geran, and to his pa.s.sion for gambling.

Dufresne had kept half of the sum produced by the sale of the consols.

He had always intended to appropriate a portion of Edouard's fortune, upon whose purse he had already been drawing for some time, because, as he said, business was not good. But Dufresne added to all his other vices that of gambling, and the sum that he kept was speedily lost in the gulf in which he had, in a very short time, squandered Madame Dolban's fortune.

Edouard pa.s.sed a large part of his days in the academies, and his nights with Madame de Geran, at whose house there was gambling of the wildest sort. People reasonably well dressed, but whose faces denoted the vilest sort of characters, resorted every evening to the house of the general's widow, where they were certain to find Monsieur Murville and some other dupes, over whom the schemers and kept women disputed.

But Madame de Geran did not lose sight of her lover; she did not propose that her slave should escape her; she was an adept at working all the springs of coquetry; all sorts of stratagems, all methods were employed to bewilder and blind a man who believed himself to be adored, and who made every conceivable sacrifice to gratify the wishes of his mistress.

Madame de Geran led her lovers a rapid pace: cards, theatres, dinners, drives, select parties, dresses, shawls, jewels, suppers, love, caresses!--only with the aid of all these could one rely even upon ostensible fidelity from her. But it must be confessed too, that amid all these diversions, Edouard had not a moment to himself; he did not even find time to be bored; and that is rarely the case when one is surfeited with everything.

But luck had ceased to be favorable to him. After winning at roulette several times in succession, he experienced the inconstancy of fortune and lost considerable sums. Instead of stopping, he persisted obstinately in going on; that is the inevitable result of a first gain, which acts as a bait to people who are beginning to frequent gambling h.e.l.ls; so that the bankers watch with a smile the gambler who goes out with his pockets full of gold, feeling very sure that the next day the unfortunate wretch will lose twice what he has won.

"S'il est quelque joueur qui vive de son gain, On en voit tous les jours mille mourir de faim."[C]

[C]

If some gamblers there be who live by their gains, We see thousands who but starve for their pains.

After trying trente-et-un, dice and roulette, and after losing twenty thousand francs in an hour, the last remnant of the sum which Dufresne had handed him before his wife's departure, Edouard returned to his house, gloomy and anxious; he scolded his servants and talked roughly to everybody without reason; but he felt the need of venting a part of his ill-humor upon his people. He entered his office, where he found the clerk asleep on his desk; he shook him roughly.

"What are you doing here? Is this the way you attend to your work?"

The young man yawned, stretched his arms, rubbed his eyes, and gazed at his employer, who was pacing the floor of the office.

"Well! do you hear me, monsieur? Why aren't you at work?"

"Why, monsieur, you know very well that I haven't any."

"Why aren't you writing circulars for the provinces?"

"Monsieur knows too that we sent several of his circulars to the same people, and they haven't answered."

"You're a fool! You don't know how to manage an affair. And what about that house that someone wanted to buy?"

"Monsieur, the person came three times to obtain information, but he didn't find you."

"You ought to have given it to him!"

"But, monsieur, I knew nothing about it."

"And that investment that someone wanted to make?"

"The person made two appointments with you that you didn't keep."

"For heaven's sake, do these people think that I am at their orders?"

"They say that you should be prompt."

"Hold your tongue! You are an insolent fellow! I have no need of a fellow who sleeps on my desk. I discharge you."

"Monsieur will please pay me my wages first."

"Your wages! You earn them by sleeping."

"Monsieur, it isn't my fault that there isn't anything to do in your office; pay me and----"

"I'll pay you; leave me."

Edouard was well aware that he had nothing with which to pay his clerk; he opened the desk, examined all the drawers, and found nothing. He relied upon the sum which Dufresne still had in his hands, and determined to see him and urge him to sell at once at any price; he absolutely must have money. Fatigued and discomfited by his sitting at the gaming table, he did not wish to go out before he had changed his clothes, and he decided to send someone at once to summon Dufresne. He rang and called his servant, but no one replied. The servants had become unaccustomed to seeing their master since Adeline had left the house; Edouard sometimes pa.s.sed several nights in succession away; the servants no longer observed any restraint, and spent their time amusing themselves. Faithful Marie, the only honest one of them all, had left the house after her mistress's departure.

Edouard left his office and went over the house; he found the kitchen empty, but the cellar door was open; he went down and found his concierge drinking his wine with the cook. The servants were dumfounded at the appearance of their master. He swore and stormed and seized the concierge by the ear, while he administered a kick to the cook.

"Monsieur," stammered the half-tipsy concierge, "you don't eat in the house any more, and we came here to find out whether the wine was getting spoiled."

Edouard drove the servants before him, left the cellar, and returned to the first floor. Thinking that he heard a noise in his wife's dressing room, he entered suddenly and found his valet deeply engrossed in close intercourse with the wife of the concierge, a rather attractive young woman, who loved love as much as her husband loved wine.

"Morbleu!" cried Edouard, "what a household! what disorder! Do you think that I will put up with this, you curs? I discharge you all!"

"As monsieur pleases," rejoined the valet, with perfect unconcern, as he attended to his costume, while the concierge's wife held her hands over her breast and did her utmost to shield herself further from the observation to which her dear friend had exposed her, "just pay us our wages, and we'll go."

Edouard left the room in a pa.s.sion, and shut himself into his office.

Since his wife's departure, he had not given a sou to his servants, for he had never had money enough to provide for his own expenses, and now he was compelled to retain wretches who robbed him, and turned everything upside down in his house. But he reflected that Dufresne would supply him with the means to extricate himself from embarra.s.sment; he was about to go in search of him when Dufresne himself entered the office, with an air of desperation.

"Ah! you come most opportunely," cried Edouard; "I was anxious to see you, my dear fellow! I must have money! I must have some this very day!"

"That will be rather hard," replied Dufresne in a gloomy voice.