“How thankful we feel, sir, for the service you have just rendered us!”
But the old lawyer seemed in no wise proud of his victory.
“Do not thank me,” he said. “I have only done my duty,—what any honest man would have done in my place.”
And yet, under the appearance of impassible coldness, which he owed to the long practice of a profession which leaves no illusions, he evidently felt a real emotion.
“It is you whom I pity,” he added, “and with all my soul,—you, madame, you, my dear Gilberte, and you, too, Maxence. Never had I so well understood to what degree is guilty the head of a family who leaves his wife and children exposed to the consequences of his crimes.”
He stopped. The servant was trying her best to put the dining-room in some sort of order wheeling the table to the centre of the room, and lifting up the chairs from the floor.
“What pillage!” she grumbled. “Neighbors too,—people from whom we bought our things! But they were worse than savages; impossible to do any thing with them.”
“Don’t trouble yourself, my good girl,” said M. Chapelain: “they won’t come back any more!”
Mme. Favoral looked as if she wished to drop on her knees before the old lawyer.
“How, very kind you are!” she murmured: “you are not too angry with my poor Vincent!”