“Very well, Marquis,” said he, and Artamène, thrilled to the core, thought, “ ‘Tu l’as voulu, Georges Dandin!’ That’s what he would really like to say, our Abbé!” And since their leader had intimated that the matter was not private after all, he applied himself to listen with all his ears. Roland, looking rather troubled, set a chair at the table for the priest and stood back.
“You must know then, Monsieur le Marquis,” began the Abbé in a low voice, “that the old lady whom I have been visiting had been present at the festivities in 1771, when the . . . the young Duc de Trélan married his bride.”
“That beautiful and most unfortunate lady!” commented M. de Brencourt under his breath.
The Marquis glanced at him for the fraction of a second, and the priest went on, nervously rubbing his hands together, and rather pale:
“It seems that there is a legend of a treasure hidden in Mirabel since the days of the Fronde, a treasure whose whereabouts no one has ever been able to discover. Since you are a kinsman of M. de Trélan’s, Monsieur le Marquis, it is possible that you have heard of the legend?”
M. de Kersaint nodded thoughtfully. “I believe I have heard of it. Yes?”
“The story appears to be true. The document describing the hiding-place of the treasure was stolen at the time—nearly a hundred and fifty years ago—and came into the possession of this old lady’s family, but in such a way that it was only recently rediscovered by the old lady herself.”
“What an extraordinary tale! Well?”
“Since then she had desired to give it to the Duc, but could not, as he was not in France. And in her delirium just now, fancying herself back at the wedding, she was talking so persistently of offering to the . . . the young couple, as a wedding gift, this paper, which would help them to what was after all their own, that M. Charlot——”
“A wedding gift for de Trélan and his wife!” interposed the Comte de Brencourt with a laugh. “Bon Dieu, what irony, considering how their wedded life ended!”