Baron Trigault's Vengeance, Emile Gaboriau [rom com books to read .txt] 📗

handsome Viscount de Coralth would not appear so calm and smiling.

The report WAS true, however. But M. de Coralth did not trouble himself much about the baroness now. Had he not got in his pocket M. Wilkie’s signature insuring him upward of half a million? Standing near one of the windows in the main reception-room, between the Marquis de Valorsay and M. Wilkie, the brilliant viscount was gayly chatting with them, when a footman, in a voice loud enough to interrupt all conversation, suddenly announced: “M. Maumejan!”

It seemed such a perfectly natural thing to M. de Valorsay that Maumejan, as one of the baron’s business agents, should be received at his house, that he was not in the least disturbed. But M. de Coralth, having heard the name, wished to see the man who had aided and advised the marquius so effectually. He abruptly turned, and as he did so the words he would have spoken died upon his lips. He became livid, his eyes seemed to start from their sockets, and it was with difficulty that he ejaculated: “He!”

“Who?” inquired the astonished marquis.

“Look!”

M. de Valorsay did so, and to his utter amazement he perceived a numerous party in the rear of the man announced under the name of Maumejan. First came Mademoiselle Marguerite, leaning on the arm of the white-haired magistrate, and then Madame Ferailleur; next M. Isidore Fortunat, and finally Chupin—Victor Chupin, resplendent in a handsome, bran-new, black dress-suit.

The marquis could no longer fail to understand the truth. He realized who Maumejan really was, and the audacious comedy he had been duped by. He was so frightfully agitated that five or six persons sprang forward exclaiming: “What is the matter, marquis? Are you ill?” But he made no reply. He felt that he was caught in a trap, and he glanced wildly around him seeking for some loophole of escape.

However, the word of command had evidently been given. Suddenly all the guests scattered about the various drawing-rooms poured into the main hall, and the doors were closed. Then, with a solemnity of manner which no one had ever seen him display before, Baron Trigault took the so-called Maumejan by the hand and led him into the centre of the apartment opposite the lofty chimney-piece. “Gentlemen,” he began, in a commanding tone, “this is M. Pascal Ferailleur, the honorable man who was falsely accused of cheating at cards at Madame d’Argeles’s house. You owe him a hearing.”

Pascal was greatly agitated. The strangeness of the situation, the certainty of speedy and startling rehabilitation, perhaps the joy of vengeance, the silence, which was so profound that he could hear his own panting breath, and the many eyes riveted upon him, all combined to unnerve him. But only for a moment. He swiftly conquered his weakness, and surveying his audience with flashing eyes, he explained, in a clear and ringing voice, the shameful conspiracy to obtain possession of the count’s millions, and the abominable machinations by which Mademoiselle Marguerite and himself had been victimized. Then when he had finished his explanations he added, in a still more commanding voice, “Now look; you can read the culprits’ guilt on their faces. One is the scoundrel known to you as the Viscount de Coralth, but Paul Violaine is his true name. He was formerly an accomplice of the notorious Mascarot; he is a cowardly villain, for he is married, and leaves his wife and children to die of starvation!” The Viscount de Coralth fairly bellowed with rage. But Pascal did not heed him. “The other criminal is the Marquis de Valorsay,” he added, in the same ringing tone. There was, moreover, a third culprit who would have inspired mingled pity and disgust if any one had noticed him shrinking into a corner, terrified and muttering: “It wasn’t my fault, my wife compelled me to do it!” This was General de Fondege.

Pascal did not mention his name. But it was not absolutely necessary he should do so, and besides, he remembered Marguerite’s entreaty respecting the son.

However, while the young lawyer was speaking, the marquis had summoned all his energy and assurance to his aid. Desperate as his plight might be, he would not surrender. “This is an infamous conspiracy,” he exclaimed. “Baron, you shall atone for this. The man’s an impostor!—he lies!—all that he says is false!”

“Yes, it is false!” echoed M. de Coralth.

But a clamor arose, drowning these protestations, and the most opprobrious epithets could be heard on every side.

“How will you prove your assertion?” cried M. de Valorsay.

“Don’t try that dodge on us!” shouted Chupin. “Vantrasson and mother Leon have confessed everything.”

“Who defrauded us all with Domingo?” cried several people; and, loud above all the others, Kami-Bey bawled out: “To say nothing of the fact that the sale of your racing stud was a complete swindle!”

Meanwhile, Pascal’s former friends and associates, his brother advocates and the magistrates who had listened to his first efforts at the bar, crowded round him, pressing his hands, embracing him almost to suffocation, censuring themselves for having suspected him, the very soul of honor, and pleading in self-justification the degenerate age in which we live—an age in which we daily see those whom we had considered immaculate suddenly yield to temptation. And a murmur of respectful admiration rose from the throng when the excitement had subsided a little, and the guests had an opportunity to observe Mademoiselle Marguerite, whose eyes sparkled more brightly than ever through her happy tears; and whose beauty acquired an almost sublime expression from her deep emotion.

The wretched Valorsay felt that all was over—that he was irretrievably lost. Seized by a blind fury like that which impels a hunted animal to turn and face the hounds that pursue him, and bid them defiance, he confronted the throng with his face distorted with passion, his eyes bloodshot, and foam upon his lips; he was absolutely frightful in his cynicism, hatred, and scorn. “Ah! well, yes!” he exclaimed—“yes, all that you have just heard is true. I was sinking, and I tried to save myself as best I could. Beggars cannot be choosers; I staked my all upon a single die. If I had won, you would have been at my feet; but I have lost and you spurn me. Cowards! hypocrites! that you are, insult me if you like, but tell me how many among you all are sufficiently pure and upright to have a right to despise me! Are there a hundred among you? are there even fifty?”

A tempest of hisses momentarily drowned his voice, but as soon as the uproar had ceased, he resumed, sneeringly: “Ah! the truth wounds you, my dear friends. Pray, don’t pretend to be so distressingly virtuous! I was ruined—that is the long and short of it. But what man of you is not embarrassed? Who among you finds his income sufficient? Which one of you is not encroaching upon his capital? And when you have come to your last louis, you will do what I have done, or something worse. Do not deny it, for not one among you has a more uncompromising conscience, more moral firmness, or more generous aspirations than I once possessed. You are pursuing what I pursued. You desire what I desired—a life of luxury, brief if it must be, but happy—a life of gayety, wild excitement, and dissipation. You, too, have a passion for pleasure and gambling, race-horses, and notorious women, a table always bountifully spread, glasses ever overflowing with wine, all the delights of luxury, and everything that gratifies your vanity! But an abyss of shame awaits