“Well, if I thought any substantial benefit to Louise Duval might result from the success of your inquiry, I would really see if it were in my power to help you. But I must have time to consider.”
“How long?”
“I can’t exactly say; perhaps three or four days.”
“Bon! I will wait. Here comes M. Georges. I leave you to dominos and him. Good-night.”
Late that night M. Lebeau was seated alone in a chamber connected with the cabinet in which he received visitors. A ledger was open before him, which he scanned with careful eyes, no longer screened by spectacles. The survey seemed to satisfy him. He murmured, “It suffices, the time has come,” closed the book, returned it to his bureau, which he locked up, and then wrote in cipher the letter here reduced into English:—
“DEAR AND NOBLE FRIEND,—Events march; the Empire is everywhere
undermined. Our treasury has thriven in my hands; the sums
subscribed and received by me through you have become more than
quadrupled by advantageous speculations, in which M. Georges has
been a most trustworthy agent. A portion of them I have continued
to employ in the mode suggested,—namely, in bringing together men
discreetly chosen as being in their various ways representatives and
ringleaders of the motley varieties that, when united at the right
moment, form a Parisian mob. But from that right moment we are as
yet distant. Before we can call passion into action, we must
prepare opinion for change. I propose now to devote no
inconsiderable portion of our fund towards the inauguration of a
journal which shall gradually give voice to our designs. Trust me
to insure its success, and obtain the aid of writers who will have
no notion of the uses to which they ultimately contribute. Now that
the time has come to establish for ourselves an organ in the press,
addressing higher orders of intelligence than those which are needed
to destroy and incapable of reconstructing, the time has also
arrived for the reappearance in his proper name and rank of the man
in whom you take so gracious an interest. In vain you have pressed
him to do so before; till now he had not amassed together, by the
slow process of petty gains and constant savings, with such
additions as prudent speculations on his own account might
contribute, the modest means necessary to his resumed position; and
as he always contended against your generous offers, no
consideration should ever tempt him either to appropriate to his
personal use a single sou intrusted to him for a public purpose, or
to accept from friendship the pecuniary aid which would abase him
into the hireling of a cause. No! Victor de Mauleon despises too
much the tools that he employs to allow any man hereafter to say,
‘Thou also wert a tool, and hast been paid for thy uses.’
“But to restore the victim of calumny to his rightful place in this
gaudy world, stripped of youth and reduced in fortune, is a task
that may well seem impossible. To-morrow he takes the first step
towards the achievement of the impossible. Experience is no bad
substitute for youth, and ambition is made stronger by the goad of
poverty.
“Thou shalt hear of his news soon.”