“What follows?” said the embarrassed magistrate; “a fine discovery that I am Lord Sartines!”
“And that he is the man of the market-notebooks, the gambling, the ring, who, with or without the knowledge of the King, traffics on the appetites of the thirty millions of French whom his functions prescribe him to feed on the lowest possible terms. Now, just imagine the effect in a slight degree of this discovery! You are little loved by the people; the King is not an affectionate man. As soon as the cries of the hungry are heard, yelling for your head, the King, to avoid all suspicion of connivance with you, if any there be, or to do justice if there is no complicity, will hasten to have you strung upon a gibbet like that on which dangled Enguerrand de Marigny, which you may remember?”
“Imperfectly,” stammered Sartines, very pale, “and you show very poor taste to talk of the gibbet to a nobleman of my degree!”
“I could not help bringing him in,” replied Balsamo, “as I seemed to see him again—poor Enguerrand! I swear to you he was a perfect gentleman out of Normandy, of very ancient family and most noble house. He was Lord High Chamberlain and Captain of the Louvre Palace, and eke Count of Longueville, a much more important county than yours of Alby. But still I saw him hooked up on the very gibbet at Montfaucon which was built under his orders, although it was not for the lack of my telling him:
“Enguerrand, my dear friend, have a care! you take a bigger slice out of the cake of finance than Charles of Valois will like. Alas, if you only knew how many chiefs of police, from Pontius Pilate down to your predecessor, who have come to grief!”
Sartines rose, trying in vain to dissimulate the agitation to which he was a prey.
“Well, accuse me if you like,” he said: “what does the testimony of a man like you amount to?”
“Take care, my lord,” Balsamo said: “men of no account were very often the very ones who bring others to account. When I write the particulars of the Great Grain Speculation to my correspondent, or Frederick who is a philosopher, as you are aware, he will be eager to transcribe it with comments for his friend, Voltaire, who knows how to swing his pen: to Alembert, that admirable geometrician, who will calculate how far these stolen grains, laid in a line side by side, will extend; in short when all the lampoon writers, pamphleteers and caricaturists get wind of this subject, you, my lord of Alby, will be a great deal worse off than my poor Marigny,—for he was innocent, or said so, and I would hardly believe that of your lordship.”
With no longer respect for decorum, Sartines took off his wig and wiped his skull.
“Have it so,” he said, “ruin me if you will. But I have your casket as you have your proofs.”