He wondered still when whispers reached him how Maire and priests, confident almoners of her bounty, were softly complaining of an inexplicable parsimony in a hand once lavish to munificence in charity. His wonder increased to hear the charge substantiated by her husband.
He had never avoided Louis-Marie; nor had ever put himself in his way. He had held his deed justified, and had told him so. For the rest, he was no precisian in matters of conscience; and if Saint-Péray could reconcile his marriage with his (as, by his growing air of resignation, not to say, of self-complacency, he appeared to be able to do), he had no mind to deny him his lovely provocation. He had never referred to the subject on their meetings—which were rare, because Louis was a dutiful husband. But once, to his surprise, his friend opened upon it voluntarily.
They had chanced upon one another on the road, when each was unattended. Something of an ancient warmth spoke in Louis’s greeting.
“Gaston,” he said: “we see so little of one another now. Is it because you blame me?”
“Si on est bien, qu’on s’y tienne,” said the other chauntingly. “Why allude to it?”
“Because I cannot bear to think I have lost your respect. Gaston, I must always hold that of more worth than—than some others do.”
Cartouche smiled.
“You are looking very well under the infliction, Louis. That is the moral of your loss.”
The young man broke out eagerly,—
“She was losing her faith in God: only I could restore it. I have always so longed to tell you. You know it was not the money! The first condition of our union was that it should be given all away—that curse turned to a blessing. I have never touched a penny of it—have never claimed the right to; only as her almoner. And now! O, if that dead man’s hand should still be on it, buying her soul to his in vengeance!”