“You would! Very well; do me the favor to question Chupin.”
CHAPTER XV
It was only two weeks since the Duc de Sairmeuse had returned to France; he had not yet had time to shake the dust of exile from his feet, and already his imagination saw enemies on every side.
He had been at Sairmeuse only two days, and yet he unhesitatingly accepted the venomous reports which Chupin poured into his ears.
The suspicions which he was endeavoring to make Martial share were cruelly unjust.
At the moment when the duke accused the baron of conspiring against the house of Sairmeuse, that unfortunate man was weeping at the bedside of his son, who was, he believed, at the point of death.
Maurice was indeed dangerously ill.
His excessively nervous organization had succumbed before the rude assaults of destiny.
When, in obedience to M. Lacheneur’s imperative order, he left the grove on the Reche, he lost the power of reflecting calmly and deliberately upon the situation.