"Well," said Bourdin in a loud voice, and bestowing a significant look on the unhappy artisan, "since things are as you say, and as you think you shall be able to pay us in a short time, why, we shall leave you for the present, and return in about four or five days; but you must not disappoint us then, remember!"
"Thank you, gentlemen. I have no doubt I shall be able to pay you then."
The bailiffs then withdrew, while Tortillard, hearing the men talk of quitting the room, had hastened down-stairs for fear of being detected listening.
"There, Madame Morel!" said Rigolette, endeavouring to draw the wife of the lapidary from the state of gloomy abstraction into which she had fallen, "do you hear that? The men have gone, and left your husband undisturbed."
"Mother! mother!" exclaimed the children, joyfully, "they have not taken father away!"
"Morel, Morel!" murmured Madeleine, her brain quite turned, "take one of those diamonds—take the largest—and sell it; no one will know it, and then we shall be delivered from our misery; poor little Adèle will get warm then, and come back to us."
Taking advantage of the instant when no one was observing him, the lapidary profited by it to steal from the room. One of the men was waiting for him on the little landing-place, which was also covered only by the roof; on this small spot opened the door of a garret, which adjoined the apartment occupied by the Morels, and in which M. Pipelet kept his dépôt of leather; and, further, this little angular recess, in which a person could not stand upright, was dignified by the melancholy porter with the name of his Melodramatic Cabinet, because, by means of a hole between the lath and plaster, he frequently indulged in the luxury of woe by witnessing the many touching scenes occasioned by the distress of the wretched family who dwelt in the garret beyond it. This door had not escaped the lynx eye of the bailiff, who had, for a time, suspected his prisoner of intending either to escape or conceal himself by means of it.
"Now, then, let us make a start of it!" cried he, beginning to descend the stairs as Morel emerged from the garret. "Rather a ragged recruit to march with," added he, beckoning to the lapidary to follow him.
"Only an instant, one single instant, for the love of God!" exclaimed Morel, as, kneeling down, he cast a last look on his wife and children through a chink in the door. Then clasping his hands, he said, in a low, heart-broken voice, while bitter tears flowed down his haggard cheeks:
"Adieu, my poor children! my wife! May Heaven preserve you all! Farewell, farewell!"