"Listen, listen!
"'On arriving from Paris this morning, I hasten to write to you, madame, after having discussed your letter with M. d'Orbigny. He recollects but very indistinctly the intimacy you allude to as having subsisted between him and your brother. As to the name of your husband, madame, it is not unknown to M. d'Orbigny; but he cannot recall to mind under what circumstances he has heard it. The spoliation of which you so unhesitatingly accuse M. Jacques Ferrand, whom we have the happiness to call our solicitor, is, in the eyes of M. d'Orbigny, a cruel calumny, whose effects you have by no means calculated upon. My husband, as well as myself, madame, know and admire the extreme probity of the respectable and pious individual whom you so blindly assail; and I am compelled to tell you, madame, that M. d'Orbigny, whilst he regrets the painful situation in which you are placed, and the real cause of which it is not his business to find out, feels it impossible to afford you the assistance requested. Accept, madame, with the expression of M. d'Orbigny's regrets, my best compliments.
"'Comtesse d'Orbigny.'"
The mother and daughter looked at each other perfectly stupefied, and incapable of uttering a word. Father Micou rapped at the door, and said:
"Madame, may I come in for the postage and commission? It's twenty sous."
"Ah, true, such good news is worth a sum on which we exist for two days," said Madame de Fermont, with a bitter smile, laying the letter down on her daughter's bed, and going towards an old trunk without a lock, to which she stooped down and opened. "We are robbed!" exclaimed the unhappy woman, with alarm. "Nothing—not a sou left!" she added, in a mournful voice; and, overwhelmed, she supported herself on the trunk.
"What do you say, mamma,—the bag with the money in it?"
But Madame de Fermont, rising suddenly, opened the room door, and, addressing the receiver, who was on the landing-place:
"Sir," she said, whilst her eyes sparkled, and her cheeks were flushed with indignation and alarm, "I had a bag of silver in this trunk; it was stolen from me, no doubt, the day before yesterday, when I went out for an hour with my daughter. The money must be restored, I tell you,—you are responsible for it!"