Mr. Downey and his attorney were struck by the ingenuity, if not force, of the argument, but not quite persuaded to release the debtor.
“Can you offer us any security?” Mr. Downey’s adviser asked.
“No,” was the terse rejoinder.
“Then I don’t see the advantage of liberating your client,” added the creditor’s attorney.
The negotiation would have broken off at this point, but for the Frenchman’s ready wit. He had a resource. He had a small contingent property in France. It was valuable enough to cover the debt of Downey and Grabble, although not to be easily realised in this country. He did not like to part with this, his only fortune, to a stranger.
A Frenchman is literally and absolutely nothing, if not always sentimental, and occasionally lachrymose.
M. Voleur shed tears when he agreed to part with this little contingent estate to his inexorable creditor; then, having exhausted his natural emotions, he returned to business, and the negotiation was renewed.
It was ultimately settled, on Downey’s giving his assurance, upon the honour of a gentleman, that he would afterwards do what he could to prop up the house of Voleur and Enlever—that is, by giving favourable references as to them—he and his partner should have an assignment made to them of this contingent estate. The sentimental Frenchman further stipulated, that when he paid the amount due to Downey and Grabble, as he expected to do very soon, the creditors should re-transfer the estate.
The compact was ratified by solemn pledges of honour.
To save appearances, it was arranged that one of the firm of Downey and Grabble should go to France, pretend to make inquiries about the respectability of Voleur and Enlever, and telegraph back “all right,” as an excuse fur the liberation of M. Voleur. The reader will see the necessity for this. Downey and Co. could not venture to speak favourably of the man they had arrested unless some excuse could be found for an altered opinion. Downey and Co. would not, of course, tell any body of the arrest of Voleur, but that ugly fact might withal leak out. How to reconcile the contents of the affidavit, which led the judge to order the Frenchman’s arrest, with the subsequent eulogiums, was the moral difficulty to be surmounted.