BRIGNAC [after a silence] Who’s the man?
LUCIE. Jacques Bernin.
BRIGNAC. Jacques Bernin!
LUCIE. Yes.
BRIGNAC [furious] Here’s a fine piece of business! Ha, at the moment of my election, too! Magnificent! Oh, she’s done me to rights, your sister has! All’s up with me now. We may as well pack our trunks and be off.
LUCIE. You exaggerate.
BRIGNAC. Do I? I tell you if she had been caught stealing—stealing, do you hear?—it wouldn’t have been worse. Even that would have compromised me less—thrown me less absolutely out of the running.
LUCIE. Leave that till later. Now the thing is to save her. You’ll go tomorrow morning, won’t you, Julien, and find this fellow? Make him see what an abominable crime it would be for him to desert our poor little girl.
BRIGNAC. Much you know him, M. Jacques Bernin. But I do! He’ll laugh in my face. His one idea is to get on in the world. Why, he was talking of his engagement to Mademoiselle Dormance two months ago and chortling over her shekels. Good lord, what a man for your sister to hit upon!
LUCIE. But you won’t abandon her?