When Noel and old Tabaret were seated face to face in Noel’s study, and the door had been carefully shut, the old fellow felt uneasy, and said: “What if your mother should require anything.”
“If Madame Gerdy rings,” replied the young man drily, “the servant will attend to her.”
This indifference, this cold disdain, amazed old Tabaret, accustomed as he was to the affectionate relations always existing between mother and son.
“For heaven’s sake, Noel,” said he, “calm yourself. Do not allow yourself to be overcome by a feeling of irritation. You have, I see, some little pique against your mother, which you will have forgotten to-morrow. Don’t speak of her in this icy tone; but tell me what you mean by calling her Madame Gerdy?”
“What I mean?” rejoined the advocate in a hollow tone,—“what I mean?”
Then rising from his arm-chair, he took several strides about the room, and, returning to his place near the old fellow, said,—
“Because, M. Tabaret, Madame Gerdy is not my mother!”
This sentence fell like a heavy blow on the head of the amateur detective.
“Oh!” he said, in the tone one assumes when rejecting an absurd proposition, “do you really know what you are saying, Noel? Is it credible? Is it probable?”
“It is improbable,” replied Noel with a peculiar emphasis which was habitual to him: “it is incredible, if you will; but yet it is true. That is to say, for thirty-three years, ever since my birth, this woman has played a most marvellous and unworthy comedy, to ennoble and enrich her son,—for she has a son,—at my expense!”