“Ah! yes,” murmured he, “the very unhappy little woman. Anything you like except that!”
Octave started. What! Trublot also! The latter made a gesture of disdain: no, not he, one of his friends. And, moreover, everybody who cared for that kind of thing.
“Excuse me,” added he. “As the old fellow’s now stowed away, I will go and render Duveyrier an account of something which I undertook to see after for him.”
The relations were retiring, silent and doleful. Then Trublot detained the counselor behind the others, to tell him that he had seen Clarisse’s maid; but he did not know the new address, the maid having left Clarisse the day before she moved out, after a battle royal. It was the last hope which had flown. Duveyrier buried his face in his handkerchief, and rejoined the other relations.
That very evening quarrels commenced, The family found itself in the presence of a disaster. Monsieur Vabre, with that skeptical carelessness which notaries occasionally display, had not left any will. All the furniture was ransacked in vain, and the worst was that there was not a rap of the expected six or seven hundred thousand francs, neither money, title-deeds nor shares; they discovered merely seven hundred and thirty-four francs in ten-sou pieces, the hoard of a silly, paralytic old man. And undeniable traces, a note-book covered with figures, letters from stockbrokers, opened the eyes of the next-of-kin, pale with passion, to the old fellow’s secret vice, an ungovernable passion for gambling, an unskillful and desperate craving for stock-jobbing, which he hid behind the innocent mania for his great statistical work. All had been engulfed, the money he had saved at Versailles, the rents of his house, even the sous he had sneaked from his children; and, during the latter years, he had gone to the point of mortgaging the house for one hundred and fifty thousand francs, at three different periods. The family stood thunder-stricken before the famous safe, in which it thought the fortune was locked up, but which simply contained a host of singular things, broken scraps picked up in the various rooms, pieces of old iron, fragments of glass, ends of ribbon, jumbled amidst wrecked toys stolen from young Gustave in bygone days.
Then the most violent recriminations were indulged in. They called the old fellow a swindler. It was disgraceful to fritter away his money thus, like a sly person who does not care a straw for any one, and who acts an infamous comedy in order to get people to continue to coddle him. The Duveyriers were inconsolable at having boarded him for twelve years, without once asking him for the eighty thousand francs of Clotilde’s dowry, of which they had only had ten thousand francs. It was always ten thousand francs, rejoined Théophile, who had not had a sou of the fifty thousand promised him at the time of his marriage. But Auguste, in his turn, complained more bitterly still, reproaching his brother with having at least secured the interest of the money during three months; whilst he would never have a shadow of the fifty thousand francs inserted in his contract. And Berthe, incited by her mother, said some very unpleasant things with an indignant air at having entered a dishonest family. And Valérie, bemoaning the rent she had so long been stupid enough to pay the old chap, for fear of being disinherited, could not stomach it, regretting the money as though it had been used for an immoral purpose, employed in supporting debauchery.
For fully a fortnight all these stories formed an exciting topic of conversation to the occupants of the house. The long and short of it was that there remained nothing but the building, estimated to be worth three hundred thousand francs; when the mortgage had been paid off, there would be about half that sum to divide between Monsieur Vabre’s three children. It was fifty thousand francs for each; a meager consolation, but they would have to make the most of it. Théophile and Auguste had already decided what they would do with their shares. It was settled that the building should be sold. Duveyrier undertook all the arrangements in his wife’s name. Then, on the day of the sale, after five or six bids, Maître Renandin abruptly knocked the house down to Duveyrier for the sum of one hundred and forty-nine thousand francs. There was not even sufficient to pay the mortgage. It was the final blow.
One never knew the particulars of the terrible scene which was enacted that same evening at the Duveyriers’. The solemn walls of the house stifled the sounds. Théophile most probably called his brother-in-law a scoundrel: he publicly accused him of having fought over the notary, by promising to get him appointed a justice of the peace. As for Auguste, he simply talked of the assize-court, where he wished to drag Maître Renandin, whose rogueries were the talk of the neighborhood. But, though one always ignored how it was that the relatives got to the point of knocking each other about, as rumor said they did, one heard the last words exchanged on the threshold, words which had an unpleasant ring in the respectable severity of the staircase.
“Dirty scoundrel!” shouted Auguste. “You sentence people to penal servitude who have not done nearly so much!”
Théophile, who came out last, held the door, whilst he almost choked with rage and coughing. .