A beseeching word uttered in a low tone by his daughter, made him turn again to the duke.
“If I purchased Sairmeuse,” he answered, in a voice husky with emotion, “it was in obedience to the command of your dying aunt, and with the money which she gave me for that purpose. If you see me here, it is only because I come to restore to you the deposit confided to my keeping.”
Anyone not belonging to that class of spoiled fools which surround a throne would have been deeply touched.
But the duke thought this grand act of honesty and of generosity the most simple and natural thing in the world.
“That is very well, so far as the principal is concerned,” said he. “Let us speak now of the interest. Sairmeuse, if I remember rightly, yielded an average income of one thousand louis per year. These revenues, well invested, should have amounted to a very considerable amount. Where is this?”
This claim, thus advanced and at such a moment, was so outrageous, that Martial, disgusted, made a sign to his father, which the latter did not see.
But the cure hoping to recall the extortioner to something like a sense of shame, exclaimed:
“Monsieur le Duc! Oh, Monsieur le Duc!”
Lacheneur shrugged his shoulders with an air of resignation.
“The income I have used for my own living expenses, and in educating my children; but most of it has been expended in improving the estate, which today yields an income twice as large as in former years.”