Then she sat down beside him on the sofa, and continued, in a determined voice: “And even, before crossing the frontier, if you want to earn a thousand-franc note, I can put you in the way of doing so.”
There was another pause.
“If it’s all above board I shall have no objection,” Antoine muttered, apparently reflecting. “You know I don’t want to mix myself up with your underhand dealings.”
“But there are no underhand dealings about it,” Félicité resumed, smiling at the old rascal’s scruples. “Nothing can be more simple: you will presently leave this room, and go and conceal yourself in your mother’s house, and this evening you can assemble your friends and come and seize the town-hall again.”
Macquart did not conceal his extreme surprise. He did not understand it at all.
“I thought,” he said, “that you were victorious.”
“Oh! I haven’t got time now to tell you all about it,” the old woman replied, somewhat impatiently. “Do you accept or not?”
“Well, no; I don’t accept—I want to think it over. It would be very stupid of me to risk a possible fortune for a thousand francs.”
Félicité rose. “Just as you like my dear fellow,” she said, coldly. “You don’t seem to realise the position you are in. You came to my house and treated me as though I were a mere outcast; and then, when I am kind enough to hold out a hand to you in the hole into which you have stupidly let yourself fall, you stand on ceremony, and refuse to be rescued. Well, then, stay here, wait till the authorities come back. As for me, I wash my hands of the whole business.”
With these words she reached the door.