Other People's Money, Emile Gaboriau [best ebook reader txt] 📗

daughter, my father hires for his pretty mistress a lovely apartment, which she occupies under the name of Mme. Devil; she is allowed fifteen hundred francs a month, servants, horses, carriage.”

Mme. de Thaller was giving signs of the utmost impatience.  Without paying any attention to them, M. de Tregars proceeded,

“Henceforth free to see each other daily, my father and his mistress cease to write.  But Mme. Devil does not waste her time.  During a space of less than eight months, from February to September, she induces my father to dispose—not in her favor, she is too disinterested for that, but in favor of her daughter—of a sum exceeding five hundred thousand francs.  In September, the correspondence is resumed.  Mme. Devil discovers that she is not happy, and acknowledges it in a letter, which shows, by its improved writing and more correct spelling, that she has been taking lessons.

“She complains of her precarious situation:  the future frightens her:  she longs for respectability.  Such is, for three months, the constant burden of her correspondence.  She regrets the time when she was a working girl:  why has she been so weak?  Then, at last, in a note which betrays long debates and stormy discussions, she announces that she has an unexpected offer of marriage; a fine fellow, who, if she only had two hundred thousand francs, would give his name to herself and to her darling little daughter.  For a long time my father hesitates; but she presses her point with such rare skill, she demonstrates so conclusively that this marriage will insure the happiness of their child, that my father yields at last, and resigns himself to the sacrifice.  And in a memorandum on the margin of a last letter, he states that he has just given two hundred thousand francs to Mme. Devil; that he will never see her again; and that he returns to live in Brittany, where he wishes, by the most rigid economy, to repair the breach he has just made in his fortune.”

“Thus end all these love-stories,” said Mme. de Thaller in a jesting tone.

“I beg your pardon:  this one is not ended yet.  For many years, my father kept his word, and never left our homestead of Tregars.  But at last he grew tired of his solitude, and returned to Paris.  Did he seek to see his former mistress again?  I think not.  I suppose that chance brought them together; or else, that, being aware of his return, she managed to put herself in his way.  He found her more fascinating than ever, and, according to what she wrote him, rich and respected; for her husband had become a personage.  She would have been perfectly happy, she added, had it been possible for her to forget the man whom she had once loved so much, and to whom she owed her position.

“I have that letter.  The elegant hand, the style, and the correct orthography, express better than any thing else the transformations of the Marquise de Javelle.  Only it is not signed.  The little working-girl has become prudent:  she has much to lose, and fears to compromise herself.

“A week later, in a laconic note, apparently dictated by an irresistible passion, she begs my father to come to see her at her own house.  He does so, and finds there a little girl, whom he believes to be his own child, and whom he at once begins to idolize.

“And that’s all.  Again he falls under the charm.  He ceases to belong to himself:  his former mistress can dispose, at her pleasure, of his fortune and of his fate.

“But see now what bad luck!  The husband takes a notion to become jealous of my father’s visits.  In a letter which is a masterpiece of diplomacy, the lady explains her anxiety.

“‘He has suspicions,’ she writes; ‘and to what extremities might he not resort, were he to discover the truth!’  And with infinite art she insinuates that the best way to justify his constant presence is to associate himself with that jealous husband.

“It is with childish haste that my father jumps at the suggestion.  But money is needed.  He sells his lands, and everywhere announces that he has great financial ideas, and that he is going to increase his fortune tenfold.

“There he is now, partner of his former mistress’s husband, engaged in speculations, director of a company.  He thinks that he is doing an excellent business:  he is convinced that he is making lots of money.  Poor honest man!  They prove to him, one morning, that he is ruined, and, what is more, compromised.  And this is made to look so much like the truth, that I interfere myself, and pay the creditors.  We were ruined; but honor was safe.  A few weeks later, my father died broken-hearted.”

Mme. de Thaller half rose from her seat with a gesture which indicated the joy of escaping at last a merciless bore.  A glance from M. de Tregars riveted her to her seat, freezing upon her lips the jest she was about to utter.

“I have not done yet,” he said rudely.

And, without suffering any interruption,

“From this correspondence,” he resumed, “resulted the flagrant, irrefutable proof of a shameful intrigue, long since suspected by my old friend, General Count de Villegre.  It became evident to me that my poor father had been most shamefully imposed upon by that mistress, so handsome and so dearly loved, and, later, despoiled by the husband of that mistress.  But all this availed me nothing.  Being ignorant of my father’s life and connections, the letters giving neither a name nor a precise detail, I knew not whom to accuse.  Besides, in order to accuse, it is necessary to have, at least, some material proof.”

The baroness had resumed her seat; and every thing about her—her attitude, her gestures, the motion of her lips—seemed to say,

“You are my guest.  Civility has its demands; but really you abuse your privileges.”

M. de Tregars went on,

“At this moment I was still a sort of savage, wholly absorbed in my experiments, and scarcely ever setting foot outside my laboratory.  I was indignant; I ardently wished to find and to punish the villains who had robbed us:  but I knew not how to go about it, nor in what direction to seek information.  The wretches would, perhaps, have gone unpunished, but for a good and worthy man, now a commissary of police, to whom I once rendered a slight service, one night, in a riot, when he was close pressed by some half-dozen rascals.  I explained the situation to him:  he took much interest in it, promised his assistance, and marked out my line of conduct.”

Mme. de Thaller seemed restless upon her seat.

“I must confess,” she began, “that I am not wholly mistress of my time.  I am dressed, as you see:  I have to go out.”

If she had preserved any hope of adjourning the explanation which she felt coming, she must have lost it when she heard the tone in which M. de Tregars interrupted her.

“You can go out to-morrow.”

And, without hurrying,

“Advised, as I have just told you,” he continued, “and assisted