"Do as you like."
While the adjunct was causing furniture to be moved away from the wall, and was searching and peering everywhere, Luisa remembered that eight or ten years before her uncle had shown her in the chest of drawers of a room on the second floor, an old sabre that had lain there ever since 1812. It had belonged to another Pietro Ribera, a lieutenant of cavalry, who had fallen at Malojaroslavetz. No one ever slept in that room above the kitchen and it was seldom entered; it was as if it did not exist. Luisa had completely forgotten the old sabre of the Empire. Oh, God! now she recalled it! What if her uncle had forgotten it also? What if he had not given it up in 1848, after the war, when orders had been issued to deliver up all weapons, under pain of death? Had her uncle grasped the fact, in his patriarchal simplicity, that this heir-loom that had lain for six-and-thirty years at the bottom of a drawer, had now become a dangerous and forbidden object? And Franco, Franco who knew nothing! Luisa was resting her hands on the back of a chair; it creaked sharply under her convulsive pressure. She withdrew her hands, frightened, as if the chair had spoken.
In fancy she saw the adjunct pass from room to room with his gendarmes, and arrive at that door, open the drawer, and discover the sabre. She made every effort to recall the exact position in which she had seen it, to find some way out of this danger; and she was silent, mechanically following with her eyes the candle which a gendarme, in obedience to his chief's gestures, held close, now to an open drawer or cupboard, now to a picture which the detective had lifted, that he might look behind it. No, she could think of no remedy. If her uncle had failed to remove the sabre, she could only trust they would not visit that room.
Franco, leaning against the stove, was following every motion of the searchers with a clouded brow. When they plunged their hands into the drawers, his rage was visible in the silent working of his jaws. Nothing was heard save, now and then, a sharp order from the detective, and a low-toned reply from the gendarmes. Nothing moved around them, save their great shadows wavering on the walls. The silence of the Receiver, of Franco and Luisa, was like the silence of those who have risked great sums in a secret gaming-house, and stand about the players who, from time to time, speak some brief word. The sinister face and voice of the detective never changed, although he had not discovered anything. To Luisa he seemed a man sure of achieving his purpose. And not to be able to do anything, not even warn Franco! But perhaps it was better he did not know; perhaps his ignorance would save him.
Having searched the hall and the loggia the detective entered the salon. He took the candle from the gendarme's hands and swiftly examined the little, illustrious men.
Seeing the portraits of Gouvion Saint-Cyr, Marmont, and other generals of Napoleon, he said: "The Engineer-in-Chief Ribera would have done far better to hang the portrait of His Excellency Field-Marshal Radetzky on his walls. Is it here?"
"No," said Franco.
"A nice government official!" said the other contemptuously, and with indescribable arrogance.
"Are government officials bound," Franco burst forth, "to hang the portraits——"
"I am not here to argue with you," the detective said, interrupting him.