After a moment of deep reflection the comte shrugged his shoulders and continued:
"Still these foolish suppositions, weak as useless, which revive all my suffering! Let me be a man, and overcome the absurd and painful emotion which I experience when I think that I am again about to see him whom, for ten years, I have loved with the most mad idolatry,—whom I have loved as my son; he—he—the son of the man whose blood I saw flow with such intense joy! And they would not let me be present at his last agony,—at his death! Ah, they know not what it was to have been stricken as deeply as I was! Then, too, to think that my name—always honoured and respected—should have been so often mentioned with scoff and derision, as is always mentioned that of a wronged husband! To think that my name—a name of which I had always been so proud—should now belong to a man whose father's heart I could have plucked out! Ah, I only wonder I do not go mad when I think of it!"
M. de Saint-Remy continued walking up and down in great agitation, and mechanically lifted up the curtain which separated the apartment in which he was from Florestan's private sitting-room, and advanced several strides into that chamber.
He had disappeared for the moment, when a small door hidden in the hangings of the wall opened softly, and Madame de Lucenay, wrapped in a large green cashmere shawl, having a very plain black velvet bonnet on, entered the salon, which the comte had but that instant quitted.
It is necessary to offer some explanation of this unexpected visit.
Florestan de Saint-Remy on the previous evening made an appointment with the duchess for the next morning. She having, as we have said, a key of the little gate in the narrow lane, had, as usual, entered by the conservatory, relying on finding Florestan on the ground floor boudoir; but, not finding him there, she believed (as had before occurred) that the vicomte was engaged in his cabinet.
A secret staircase led from the boudoir to the story above. Madame de Lucenay went up without hesitation, supposing that M. de Saint-Remy had given orders, as usual, to be denied to everybody. Unluckily, a threatening call from M. Badinot had compelled Florestan to go out hastily, and he had forgotten his rendezvous with Madame de Lucenay. She, not seeing any person, was about to enter the cabinet, when the curtain was thrown on one side, and the duchess found herself confronted with Florestan's father.
She could not repress a shriek.
"Clotilde!" exclaimed the comte, greatly astonished.
Intimately acquainted with the Prince de Noirmont, father of Madame de Lucenay, M. de Saint-Remy had known her from her childhood, and, during her girlhood, calling her, as he now did, by her baptismal name. The duchess, motionless with surprise, continued gazing on the old man with his white beard and mean attire, whose features she could not recall to mind.