She spoke like a sovereign, and he bowed his back, for he had obeyed people all his life; first his wife, then his daughter, and now that dethroned old queen who terrified him in spite of the dim feeling of rebellion which had been growing within him for some time past.
"No doubt, I might take the young man on," he said, "but who is he?"
Constance did not immediately reply. She had turned towards the fire, apparently for the purpose of raising a log of wood with the tongs, but in reality to give herself time for further reflection. What good would it do to tell him everything at once? She would some day be forced to tell it him, if she wished to have him entirely on her side; but there was no hurry, and she fancied that it would be skilful policy if at present she merely prepared the ground.
"He is a young man whose position has touched me, on account of certain recollections," she replied. "Perhaps you remember a girl who worked here—oh! a very long time ago, some thirty years at the least—a certain Norine Moineaud, one of old Moineaud's daughters."
Morange had hastily raised his head, and as sudden light flashed on his memory he looked at Constance with dilated eyes. Before he could even weigh his words he let everything escape him in a cry of surprise: "Alexandre-Honoré, Norine's son, the child of Rougemont!"
Quite thunderstruck by those words, Constance dropped the tongs she was holding, and gazed into the old man's eyes, diving to the very depths of his soul.
"Ah! you know, then!" she said. "What is it you know? You must tell me; hide nothing. Speak! I insist on it!"
What he knew? Why, he knew everything. He spoke slowly and at length, as from the depths of a dream. He had witnessed everything, learnt everything—Norine's trouble, the money given by Beauchêne to provide for her at Madame Bourdieu's, the child carried to the Foundling Hospital and then put out to nurse at Rougemont, whence he had fled after stealing three hundred francs. And the old accountant was even aware that the young scamp, after stranding on the pavement of Paris, had led the vilest of lives there.
"But who told you all that? How do you know all that?" cried Constance, who felt full of anxiety.
He waved his arm with a vague, sweeping gesture, as if to take in all the surrounding atmosphere, the whole house. He knew those things because they were things pertaining to the place, which people had told him of, or which he had guessed. He could no longer remember exactly how they had reached him. But he knew them well.