"To propose an unworthy action to me, that you might feel assured that I deserved your confidence."
"My dear Dutertre, I repeat to you that I must have this letter. It concerns an affair which is very important to me."
M. Pascal was speaking seriously. Dutertre could no longer doubt it. He then remembered the words of his father, the antipathy of his little girl, and, seized with a vague dread, he replied, in a constrained voice:
"So, monsieur, you forget the grave responsibility which would rest upon me if I did what you desire."
"Eh, my God! my brave Dutertre, if we only asked easy things of our friends!"
"You ask of me an impossible thing, monsieur."
"So, then, you refuse to do it for me, do you?"
"M. Pascal," said Dutertre, with an accent at the same time firm and full of emotion, "I owe you everything. There is not a day that I, my wife, and my father do not recall the fact that, one year ago, without your unexpected succour, our own ruin, and the ruin of many other people, would have been inevitable. All that gratitude can inspire of respect and affection we feel for you. Every possible proof of devotion we are ready to give you with pleasure, with happiness, but—"
"One word more, and you will understand me," interrupted M. Pascal. "Since I must tell you, Dutertre, I have a special interest in having some one who belongs to me—entirely to me, you understand, entirely mine—in the business house of Durand. Now, you can comprehend that, holding Marcelange by this letter which you will give me for him, and by what I know of his antecedents, I can make him my creature, my blind instrument. This is entirely between us, my dear Dutertre, and, counting on your absolute discretion, I will go further even, and I will tell you that—"
"Not a word more on this subject, sir, I beg," exclaimed Dutertre, with increasing surprise and distress, for up to that time he had believed Pascal to be a man of incorruptible integrity. "Not a word more. There are secrets whose confidence one does not wish to accept."