“Who knows?” murmured M. de Tregars.
But M. Saint Pavin heard him not. Prey to a violent agitation, he was pacing up and down the room.
“Ah, those men of cold appearance,” he growled, “those men with discreet countenance, those close-shaving calculators, those moralists! What fools they do make of themselves when once started! Who can imagine to what insane extremities this one may have been driven under the spur of some mad passion!”
And stamping violently his foot upon the carpet, from which arose clouds of dust,
“And yet,” he swore, “I must find him. And, by thunder! wherever he may be hid, I shall find him.”
M. de Tregars was watching M. Saint Pavin with a scrutinizing eye.
“You have a great interest in finding him, then?” he said.
The other stopped short.
“I have the interest,” he replied, “of a man who thought himself shrewd, and who has been taken in like a child,—of a man to whom they had promised wonders, and who finds his situation imperilled, —of a man who is tired of working for a band of brigands who heap millions upon millions, and to whom, for all reward, they offer the police-court and a retreat in the State Prison for his old age, —in a word, the interests of a man who will and shall have revenge, by all that is holy!”
“On whom?”