This melancholy news was received with groans and tears by everyone save Louis, who remained calm and unmoved: not a single muscle of his face quivered.
But his eyes sparkled with triumph. A secret voice cried within him, “Now you are assured of the family fortune, and a marquis’s coronet.”
He was no longer the poverty-stricken younger son, but the sole heir of the Clamerans.
The corporal of the gendarmes had said:
“I would not be the one to tell the poor old man that his son is drowned.”
Louis felt none of the tender-hearted scruples of the brave old soldier. He instantly went to his father’s sick-room, and said, in a firm voice:
“My brother had to choose between disgrace and death; he is dead.”
Like a sturdy oak stricken by lightning, the marquis tottered and fell when these fatal words sounded in his ears. The doctor soon arrived, but alas! only to say that science was of no avail.
Toward daybreak, Louis, without a tear, received his father’s last sigh.
Louis was now the master.