"Very well; then all you have to do is to bring the required sum to the prison, and then, and not till then, your father—if he is your father—will be set at liberty. Come, master, we must start, or we never shall get there."
"Do you really mean to take him away?"
"Do I? Don't I? Just look here; I am ready to give you a memorandum of having received so much on account; and, whenever you bring the rest, you shall have a receipt in full, and your father along with it. There, now, that's a handsome offer, ain't it?"
"Mercy! mercy!" supplicated Louise.
"Whew!" cried the man, "here's a scene over again! My stars, I hope this one isn't a-going mad, too, for the whole family seems uncommon queer about the head! Well, I declare I never see anything like it! It is enough to set a man 'prespiring' in the midst of winter!" and here the bailiff burst into a loud, coarse laugh at his own brutal wit.
"Oh, my poor, dear father!" exclaimed Louise, almost distractedly; "when I had hoped to have saved you!"
"No, no!" cried the lapidary, in a tone of utter despair, and stamping his foot in wild desperation, "hope nothing for me; God has forgotten me, and Heaven has ceased to be just to a wretch like me!"
"Calm yourself, my worthy friend," said a rich, manly voice; "there is always a kind Providence that watches over and preserves good and honest men like you."
At the same instant Rodolph appeared at the door of the small recess we have spoken of, from whence he had been an invisible spectator of much that we have related; he was pale, and extremely agitated. At this sudden apparition the bailiff drew back, with surprise; while Morel and his daughter gazed on the stranger with bewildered wonder. Taking from his waistcoat pocket a quantity of folded bank-notes, Rodolph selected three, and, presenting them to Malicorne, he said:
"Here are two thousand five hundred francs; give this young woman back the money you have just received from her."