"Hell! Must I, then, drink the draught of shame to the very dregs?"
"Come, come, good luck; be tender, passionate, charming. I will run to Petit-Jean; you will find me there until three o'clock; later than that will be useless; the attorney-general's office closes at four o'clock." And M. Badinot left the apartment.
When the door was closed, they heard Florestan exclaim in accents of the deepest despair: "Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!"
During this conversation, which unveiled to the comte the infamy of his son, and to Madame de Lucenay the infamy of the man she had so blindly loved, both had remained motionless, scarcely breathing, beneath this fearful disclosure. It would be impossible to depict the mute eloquence of the agonising scene which took place between this young lady and the comte when he had no longer any possible doubt as to Florestan's crime. Extending his arms to the room in which his son was, the old man smiled with bitterest sarcasm, casting an overwhelming look on Madame de Lucenay, which seemed to say, "And this is the man for whom you have braved all shame,—made every sacrifice! This is he whom you have reproached me for abandoning?"
The duchess understood the reproach, and, bowing her head, she felt all the weight of her shame. The lesson was terrible. By degrees, however, a haughty indignation succeeded to the cruel anxiety which had contracted the features of Madame de Lucenay. The inexcusable faults of this lady were at least palliated by the sincerity and disinterestedness of her love, by the boldness of her devotion and the boundlessness of her generosity, by the frankness of her character, and by her inexorable aversion from all that was contemptible and base.
Still too young, too handsome, too recherché, to feel the humiliation of having been merely made a tool of, when once the feeling of love was suddenly crushed within her, this haughty and decided woman felt no longer hatred or anger, but instantaneously, and without any transition, a deadly disgust, an icy disdain, at once destroyed all that affection hitherto so strong. She was no longer the mistress, unworthily deceived by her lover, but the lady of high blood and rank detecting a man of her circle to be a swindler and a forger, and driving him forth. Supposing that there were even some extenuating circumstances for the ignominy of Florestan, Madame de Lucenay would not have admitted them; for, in her estimation, the man who crossed certain bounds of honour, whether from vice, weakness, or persuasion, no longer had an existence in her eyes, honourable demeanour being with her a question of existence or non-existence. The only painful feeling which the duchess experienced was excited by the terrible effect which this unexpected revelation produced on her old friend, the comte.
For some moments he seemed neither to see nor hear; his eyes were fixed, his head bowed, his arms hanging by his side, his face livid as death; whilst from time to time a convulsive sigh heaved his breast. With such a man, as resolute as energetic, such a condition was more alarming than the most violent transports of anger. Madame de Lucenay regarded him with great uneasiness.
"Courage, my dear friend," she said to him, in a low voice, "for you,—for me,—for this man,—I know what remains for me to do."
The old man looked steadfastly at her, and then, as if aroused from his stupor by a violent internal commotion, he raised his head, his features assumed a menacing appearance, and, forgetting that his son could hear him, he exclaimed:
"And I, too, for you,—for me,—and for this man,—I know what remains for me to do."