Mademoiselle Marguerite sadly shook her head. “You are mistaken, General; the count left no will, and has made no provision whatever for me.”
M. de Fondege trembled, turned a trifle pale, and in a faltering voice, exclaimed: “What! You tell me that? Chalusse! A thousand thunderclaps! It isn’t possible.”
“The count was stricken with apoplexy in a cab. He went out about five o’clock, on foot, and a little before seven he was brought home unconscious. Where he had been we don’t know.”
“You don’t know? you don’t know?”
“Alas! no; and he was only able to utter a few incoherent words before he died.” Thereupon the poor girl began a brief account of what had taken place during the last four-and-twenty hours. Had she been less absorbed in her narrative she would have noticed that the General was not listening to her. He was sitting at the count’s desk and was toying with the letters which Madame Leon had brought into the room a short time previously. One of them especially seemed to attract his attention, to exercise a sort of fascination over him as it were. He looked at it with hungry eyes, and whenever he touched it, his hand trembled, or involuntarily clinched. His face, moreover, had become livid; his eyes twitched nervously; he seemed to have a difficulty in breathing, and big drops of perspiration trickled down his forehead. If the magistrate were able to see the General’s face, he must certainly have been of opinion that a terrible conflict was raging in his mind. The struggle lasted indeed for fully five minutes, and then suddenly, certain that no one saw him, he caught up the letter in question and slipped it into his pocket.
Poor Marguerite was now finishing her story: “You see, monsieur, that, far from being an heiress, as you suppose, I am homeless and penniless,” she said.
The General had risen from his chair, and was striding up and down the room with every token of intense agitation. “It’s true,” he said apparently unconscious of his words. “She’s ruined—lost—the misfortune is complete!” Then, suddenly pausing with folded arms in front of Mademoiselle Marguerite: “What are you going to do?” he asked.
“God will not forsake me, General,” she replied.
He turned on his heel and resumed his promenade, wildly gesticulating and indulging in a furious monologue which was certainly not very easy to follow. “Frightful! terrible!” he growled. “The daughter of an old comrade—zounds!—of a friend of thirty years’ standing—to be left in such a plight! Never, a thousand thunderclaps!—never! Poor child!—a heart of gold, and as pretty as an angel! This horrible Paris would devour her at a single mouthful! It would be a crime—an abomination! It sha’n’t be!—the old veterans are here, firm as rocks!”
Thereupon, approaching the poor girl again, he exclaimed in a coarse but seemingly feeling voice: “Mademoiselle Marguerite.”