"To fetch what will convince you of the truth of the reports as to the embarrassment of my affairs," said the notary, ironically; and, opening the door of a small private staircase, which enabled him to go into the pavilion at the back without passing through the office, he disappeared. He had scarce left the room, when the head clerk rapped again.
"Come in," said Charles Robert.
"Is not M. Ferrand here?"
"No, my worthy pounce and parchment" (another joke of M. Robert).
"There is a lady with a veil on, who wishes to see my employer this moment on a very urgent affair."
"Worthy quill-driver, the excellent employer will be here in a moment, and I will inform him. Is the lady handsome?"
"One must be very keen-sighted to discover; for she has on a black veil, so thick that it is impossible to see her face."
"Really, really, I will make her show her face as I go out. I'll tell the governor as soon as he returns."
The clerk left the room.
"Where the devil has the attorney at law vanished?" said M. Charles Robert. "To examine the state of his finances, no doubt. If these reports are groundless, so much the better. And, when all is said and done, they can but be false reports. Men of Jacques Ferrand's honesty always have so many people jealous of them! Still, at the same time, I should just as well like to have my own cash. I will certainly buy the château in question. There are towers and Gothic turrets quite à la Louis Quatorze, the real renaissance, and, in a word, all that is most rococo. It would give me a kind of landed proprietor's sort of air which would be capital. It would not be like my amour with that flirt of a Madame d'Harville. Has she really cut me? Can she really have given me the 'go-by?' No, no! I am not trifled with as that stupid porteress in the Rue du Temple, with her bob-wig, says. Yet this agreeable little flirtation has cost me at least one thousand crowns. True, the furniture is left, and I have quite enough in my power to compromise the marchioness. But here comes the lawyer!"