"You lack good form, my dear fellow. The other evening, at your own house, I considered your manners very vulgar and unbecoming. It serves no purpose to insult people, especially as I'm a fencing-master, and, if we should carry the thing any farther, I could put two inches of cold steel into your body at whatever point I chose; but I am a good sort of fellow, and instead of a sword-thrust I prefer to give you some advice which your master will do well to profit by. This is what I would do if I were in your place; I would hunt up Moëssard and buy him without haggling over the price. Hemerlingue has given him twenty thousand francs to speak, I would offer him thirty thousand to hold his tongue."
"Never, never!" roared M. Noël. "Instead of that I will go and wring the miserable bandit's neck."
"You will wring nothing at all. Whether the story is true or false, you have seen the effect of it to-night. That's a specimen of the pleasures in store for you. What do you expect, my dear fellow? You have thrown away your crutches and tried to walk alone too soon. That's all right if you're sure of yourself and firm on your legs; but when your footing is not very good anyway, and in addition you are unlucky enough to have Hemerlingue at your heels, it's a bad business. And with it all your master's beginning to be short of money; he has given notes to old Schwalbach, and don't talk to me of a Nabob who gives notes. I am well aware that you have heaps of millions over yonder in Tunis; but you will have to have your election confirmed in order to get possession of them, and after a few more articles like the one to-day, I'll answer for it that you won't succeed. You undertake to struggle with Paris, my boy, but you're not big enough, you know nothing about it. This isn't the Orient, and, although we don't wring the necks of people who offend us, or throw them into the water in leather bags, we have other ways of putting them out of sight. Let your master beware, Noël. One of these days Paris will swallow him as I swallow this plum, without spitting out the stone or the skin!"
Really the old man was most imposing, and, notwithstanding the paint on his face, I began to feel some respect for him. While he was speaking we heard the music overhead, the singing provided for the entertainment of the guests, and out on the square the horses of the municipal guards shaking their curb-chains. Our party must have been a very brilliant affair from outside, with the myriads of candles and the illuminated doorway. And when one thinks of the ruin that perhaps was beneath it all! We stood there in the vestibule like rats taking council together in the hold, when the vessel is beginning to take in water without the crew suspecting it, and I saw plainly enough that everybody, footmen and lady's maids, would soon scamper away at the first alarm. Can it be that such a catastrophe is possible? But in that case, what would become of me and the Territoriale, and my advances and my back pay?
That Francis left me with cold shivers running down my back.
XVI.
A PUBLIC MAN.
The luminous warmth of a bright May afternoon made the lofty windows of the hôtel de Mora as hot as the glass roof of a greenhouse; its transparent hangings of blue silk could be seen from without between the branches, and its broad terraces, where the exotic flowers, brought into the air for the first time, ran like a border all the length of the quay. The great rakes scraping among the shrubs in the garden left on the gravelled paths the light footprints of summer, while the soft pattering of the water from the sprinklers on the green lawn seemed like its revivifying song.