Suzanne made a sign of despair, then addressing Luc she said: 'I was advising him not to go out to-day. What is the use of worrying like that.'
But her husband silenced her: 'It isn't merely to-day's money that worries me, there are all the sums piled up already—those milliards which fresh millions increase every evening. I quite lose myself among them; I no longer know how to live in the midst of such a colossal fortune. It is necessary that I should invest it, manage it, watch over it, in order to save myself from being robbed—is that not so? And, oh! it's hard work, terribly hard work, and makes me absolutely wretched—more wretched even than the poor who have neither fire nor bread.'
His voice had begun to tremble dolorously, and big tears rolled down his cheeks. He looked a pitiable object, and, although he generally annoyed Luc, who regarded him as an anomaly in that industrious city, the other was now stirred to the depths of his heart. 'Oh!' said he, 'you can at least take a day's rest. I'm of your wife's opinion. If I were you I shouldn't go out to-day, I should stop in my garden and watch my flowers bloom.'
But Boisgelin again scrutinised him and, as if yielding to a desire to confide in him, as in a safe friend, resumed: 'No, no, it is indispensable that I should go out. What bothers me even more than exercising supervision over my men and my fortune, is that I don't even know where to put my money. Just think of it! there are milliards and milliards! They end by becoming an encumbrance—no rooms are built big enough to hold them. And so it has occurred to me to have a look round and try to find some pit which might be deep enough. Only, don't say a word of it; nobody ought even to suspect it.'
Then as Luc, shuddering and terrified, turned towards Suzanne, who was very pale, and scarce able to restrain her tears, Boisgelin profited by the opportunity to slip out of the garden and go off. He could still walk rapidly, and, turning down the sunlit avenue, he speedily disappeared. Luc's first impulse was to run after him and bring him back by force.
'I assure you, my friend,' he said to Suzanne, 'that you act wrongly in letting him wander about; I can never meet him prowling around the schools or through the workshops and stores without fearing some disaster.'
However, Suzanne strove to reassure him. 'He is inoffensive, I am sure of it,' she said. 'True, I sometimes tremble for him, for he becomes so gloomy beneath the burden of all that imaginary money of his that a sudden impulse to have done with it all is to be feared. But how can I shut him up? He is only happy out of doors, and to place him in confinement would be useless cruelty, especially as he never even speaks to anybody, but remains as wild and as timid as a truant schoolboy.'
Then the tears, which she had been restraining, flowed forth. 'Ah! the unhappy man, he has caused me much suffering; but never before did I feel so grieved.'
On learning that Luc was going to the schools Suzanne resolved to accompany him. She also had aged; she was sixty-eight already. But she had remained healthy and active, ever desirous of showing her interest in others, and helping on good work. And since she had been living at La Crêcherie, and had had nothing more to do for her son Paul, who was now married and the father of several children, she had created a larger family for herself by becoming a teacher of solfeggio and singing for some of the youngest pupils in the schools. This helped her to live happily. It delighted her to arouse the musical instinct in those little children. She herself was a good musician, but after all her ambition was not so much to impart exceptional science to them, as to render their singing natural, like that of the warblers of the woods. And she had obtained marvellous results—there was all the sonorous gaiety of an aviary in her class, and the young ones who left her hands afterwards filled the other classes, the workshops, and indeed the whole town, with perpetual mirthful melody.
'But you don't give your lesson to-day, do you?' Luc inquired.