"You are not mistaken, sir," said Pascal to the old man. "Your son is hiding something from you, and in his interest, in yours, and in the interest of your daughter-in-law and her children, you ought not to be ignorant of it."

"But M. Pascal, can nothing touch your heart?" cried Charles Dutertre.

"Are you without pity, without compa.s.sion?"

"It is because I pity your obstinate folly, and that of your wife, my dear Dutertre, that I wish to appeal from it, to the good sense of your respectable father."

"Charles," cried Sophie, "however cruel the truth may be, tell it. This doubt, this agony, is beyond my endurance!"

"My son," added the old man, "be frank, as you have always been, and we will have courage."

"You see, my dear Dutertre," persisted M. Pascal, "your worthy father himself wishes to know the truth."

"Monsieur," answered Dutertre, in a broken voice, looking at Pascal with tears which he could hardly restrain, "be good, be generous, as you have been until to-day. Your power is immense, I know; with one word you can plunge us in distress, in disaster; but with one word, too, you can restore to us the peace and happiness which we have owed to you. I implore you, do not be pitiless."

At the sight of the tears, which, in spite of his efforts to control, rose to the eyes of Dutertre, a man so resolute and energetic, Sophie detected the greatness of the danger, and, turning to M. Pascal, said, in a heartrending voice:

"My G.o.d! I do not know the danger with which you threaten us, but I am afraid, oh, I am afraid, and I implore you also, M. Pascal."

"After having been our saviour," cried Dutertre, drying the tears which escaped in spite of him, "surely you will not be our executioner!"

"Your executioner!" repeated Pascal. "Please G.o.d, my poor friends, it is not I, it is you who wish to be your own executioner. This word you expect from me, this word which can a.s.sure your happiness, say it, my dear Dutertre, and our little feast will be as joyous as it ought to be; if not, then do not complain of the bad fate which awaits you. Alas, you will have it so!"

"Charles, if it depends on you," cried Sophie, in a voice of agony, "if this word M. Pascal asks depends on you, then say it, oh, my G.o.d, since the salvation of your father and your children depend upon it."

"You hear your wife, my dear Dutertre," resumed Pascal. "Will you be insensible to her voice?"

"Ah, well, then," cried Dutertre, pale and desperate, "since this man is pitiless, you, my father, and you, too, Sophie, can know all. I dismissed Marcelange from my employ. M. Pascal has an interest, of which I am ignorant, in having this man enter the business house of Durand, and he asks me to give to this firm a voucher for the integrity of a wretch whom I have thrown out of my establishment as an arrant impostor."

"Ah, monsieur," said the old man, shocked, as he turned to the side where he supposed M. Pascal to be, "that is impossible. You cannot expect such an unworthy action from my son!"

"And if I refuse to do this degrading thing," said Dutertre, "M. Pascal withdraws from me the capital which I have so rashly accepted, he refuses me credit, and in our present crisis that would be our loss, our ruin."

"Great G.o.d!" whispered Sophie, terrified.

"That is not all, father," continued Dutertre. "My wife, too, must pay her tribute of shame. M. Pascal is, he says, in love with Mlle.

Antonine, and Sophie must serve this love, which she knows to be impossible, and which for honourable reasons she disapproves, or a threat is still suspended over our heads. Now you have the truth, father,--submit to a ruin as terrible as unforeseen, or commit a base action, such is the alternative to which a man whom we have trusted so long as loyal and generous reduces me."

"That again, always that; so goes the world," interposed M. Pascal, sighing and shrugging his shoulders. "So long as they can receive your aid without making any return, oh, then they flatter you and praise you.

It is always 'My n.o.ble benefactor, my generous saviour;' they call you 'dear, good man,' load you with attentions; they embroider purses for you and make a feast for you. The little children repeat compliments to you, but let the day come when this poor, innocent man presumes in his turn to ask one or two miserable little favours, then they cry, 'Scoundrel!' 'Unworthy!' 'Infamous!'"

"Any sacrifice, compatible with honour, you might have asked of me, M.

Pascal," said Dutertre, in a voice which told how deeply he was wounded, "and I would have made it with joy!"

"Then, what is to be expected?" continued Pascal, without replying to Dutertre, "if the 'good, innocent man,' so good-natured as they suppose him to be, the benefactor, at last, grows weary, ingrat.i.tude breaks his heart, for he is naturally sensitive, too sensitive?"

"Ingrat.i.tude!" cried Sophie, bursting into tears, "we--we--ingrates, oh, my G.o.d!"

"And as the 'good, innocent man' sees a little later that he has been mistaken," continued Pascal, without replying to Sophie, "as he recognises the fact, with pain, that he has been dealing with people incapable of putting their grateful friendship beyond a few puerile prejudices, he says to himself that he would be by far too much of an 'innocent man' to continue to open his purse for the use of such lukewarm friends. So he withdraws his money and his credit as I do, being brought to this resolution by certain circ.u.mstances consequent upon the refusal of this dear Dutertre, whom I loved so much, and whom I would love still to call my friend. One last word, sir," added Pascal, addressing the old man. "I have just told you frankly my att.i.tude toward your son, and his toward me; but as it would cost my own heart too much to renounce the faith that I had in the affection of this dear Dutertre, as I know the terrible evils which, through his own fault, must come upon him and his family, I am willing still to give him one quarter of an hour for reconsideration. Let him give me the letter in question, let Madame Dutertre make me the promise that I ask of her, and all shall become again as in the past, and I shall ask for breakfast, and enthusiastically drink a toast to friendship. You are the father of Dutertre, monsieur, you have a great influence over him; judge and decide."

"Charles," said the old man to his son, in a voice full of emotion, "you have acted as an honest man. That is well, but there is still another thing to do; to refuse to vouch for the integrity of a scoundrel is not enough."

"Ah, ah!" interrupted Pascal, "what more, then, is there to do?"

"If M. Pascal," continued the old man, "persists in this dangerous design, you ought, my son, to write to the house of Durand, that for reasons of which you are ignorant, but which are perhaps hostile to their interests, M. Pascal desires to place this Marcelange with them, and that they must be on their guard, because to be silent when an unworthy project is proposed is to become an accomplice."

"I will follow your advice, father," replied Dutertre, in a firm voice.

"Better and better," exclaimed Pascal, sighing, "to ingrat.i.tude they add the odious abuse of confidence. Ah, well, I will drink the cup to the dregs. Only, my poor former friends," added he, throwing a strange and sinister glance upon the actors in this scene, "only I fear, you see, that after drinking it a great deal of bitterness and rancour will remain in my heart, and then, you know, when a legitimate hatred succeeds a tender friendship, this hatred, unhappily, becomes a terrible thing."

"Oh, Charles! he frightens me," whispered the young wife, drawing nearer her husband.

"As to you, my dear Sophie," added the old man, with imperturbable calmness, without replying to M. Pascal's threat, "you ought not only to favour in nothing--the course which you have taken--a marriage which you must disapprove, but if M. Pascal persists in his intentions, you ought, by all means, to enlighten Mlle. Antonine as to the character of the man who seeks her. To do that, you have only to inform her at what an infamous price he put the continuation of the aid he has rendered your husband."

"That is my duty," replied Sophie, in a calmer voice, "and I will do it, father."

"And you, too, my dear Madame Dutertre, to abuse an honest confidence!"

said M. Pascal, hiding his anger under a veil of sweetness, "to strike me in my dearest hope, ah, this is generous! G.o.d grant that I may not give myself up to cruel retaliation! After two years of friendship to part with such sentiments! But it must be, it must be!" added Pascal, looking alternately at Dutertre and his wife. "Is all ended between us?"

Sophie and her husband preserved a silence full of resignation and dignity.

"Oh, well," said Pascal, taking his hat, "another proof of the ingrat.i.tude of men, alas!"

"Monsieur," cried Dutertre, exasperated beyond measure at the affected sensibility of Pascal, "in the presence of the frightful blow with which you intend to crush us, this continued sarcasm is atrocious. Leave us, leave us!"

"Ah, here I am driven away from this house by people who are conscious of owing their happiness to me for so long a time,--their salvation even, they owe to me," said Pascal, walking slowly toward the door.

"Driven away from here! I! Ah, this mortifying grief disappoints me, indeed!"

Then, pausing, he rummaged his pocket, and drew out the little purse that Sophie had given him a few moments before, and, handing it to the young wife, he said, with a pitiless accent of sardonic contrition:

"Happily, they are mute, or these pearls of steel would tell me every moment how much my name was blessed in this house from which I am driven away."

Then, with the air of changing his mind, he put the purse back in his pocket, after looking at it with a melancholy smile, and said:

"No, no, I will keep you, poor little innocent purse. You will recall to me the little good I have done, and the cruel deception which has been my reward."

So saying, M. Pascal put his hand on the k.n.o.b of the door, opened it, and went out, while Sophie and her husband and her father sat in gloomy silence.

This oppressive silence was still unbroken when M. Pascal, returning and opening the door half-way, said across the threshold:

"To tell the truth, Dutertre, I have reflected. Listen to me, my dear Dutertre."

A ray of foolish hope illumined the face of Dutertre; for a moment he believed that, in spite of the cold and sarcastic cruelty that Pascal had first affected, he did feel some pity at last.

Sophie shared the same hope; like her husband she listened with indescribable anguish to the words of the man who was to dispose so absolutely of their fate, while Pascal said:

"Next Sat.u.r.day is your pay-day, is it not, my dear Dutertre? Let me call you so notwithstanding what has pa.s.sed between us."

"Thank G.o.d, he has some pity," thought Dutertre, and he replied aloud: