“I think that Daddy Tantaine is a man of observation and powerful will, and that he will mould this child between his fingers like wax.”
CHAPTER III.
THE OPINION OF DR. HORTEBISE.
Dr. Hortebise, who had addressed Mascarin so familiarly by his Christian name of Baptiste, was about fifty-six years of age, but he carried his years so well, that he always passed for forty-nine. He had a heavy pair of red, sensual-looking lips, his hair was untinted by gray, and his eyes still lustrous. A man who moved in the best society, eloquent in manner, a brilliant conversationalist, and vivid in his perceptions, he concealed under the veil of good-humored sarcasm the utmost cynicism of mind. He was very popular and much sought after. He had but few faults, but quite a catalogue of appalling vices. Under this Epicurean exterior lurked, it was reported, the man of talent and the celebrated physician. He was not a hard-working man, simply because he achieved the same results without toil or labor. He had recently taken to homoeopathy, and started a medical journal, which he named The Globule, which died at its fifth number. His conversation made all society laugh, and he joined in the ridicule, thus showing the sincerity of his views, for he was never able to take the round of life seriously. To-day, however, Mascarin, well as he knew his friend, seemed piqued at his air of levity.
“When I asked you to come here to-day,” said he, “and when I begged you to conceal yourself in my bedroom—”
“Where I was half frozen,” broke in Hortebise.
“It was,” went on Mascarin, “because I desired your advice. We have started on a serious undertaking,—an undertaking full of peril both to you and to myself.”
“Pooh! I have perfect confidence in you,—whatever you do is done well, and you are not the man to fling away your trump cards.”
“True; but I may lose the game, after all, and then——”