"Very well," said the marquise; then, while Pascal, wholly overcome, was leaning on the armchair before his desk, she took a sheet of paper and a pen, and wrote what follows:
"Sign the deed, and, not only will I not live opposite your house, but this evening I will leave Paris, and will not return in a long time. What I promise I will keep."
Having written these lines, she handed the paper to Pascal, and said to the notary:
"I beg your pardon, sir; it concerned a condition relating to the deed that I desire to submit to M. Pascal."
"Certainly, madame," replied the notary, while the financier was reading.
He had hardly concluded his examination of the note, when he said to the notary, in a changed voice, as if he were eager to escape a great danger:
"Let us—finish—this—deed."
"I am going, monsieur, to give you a reading of it before signing," replied the notary, drawing the deed from his pocketbook, and slowly unfolding it.
But M. Pascal snatched it rudely from his hands and said, as if his sight were overcast:
"Where must I sign?"