Thérèse replied:
“Ill? That would be so serious in comparison!”
“Sapristi!” Uncle Cyprien exclaimed, opening his eyes wide. “You frighten me! Worse than being ill, what is it? Good God, what can it be?...”
“ going to tell you, Uncle, but I need all your devotion and all your attention....”
“They are yours, nephew!... I am listening while I work ... or I work while I listen.... For you, my ears, and my eyes for my machine!... But, be quick, because you frighten me with your solemn face.”
While his niece spoke, accordingly, M. Raindal, the younger never once looked up from his work. He rubbed and polished and oiled; his hands ran among the oil-cans, black rags, greasy bits of flannel, screwdrivers, and wrenches; at first sight, one might have thought him a sheep-shearer practising his art upon a tricycle.
“Unfortunate!” he merely murmured at intervals, his head still bent down. “Very unfortunate!... Most unfortunate!...”
Nevertheless, he was making up his mind very coolly, under the cover of his busy appearance. Although his losses were small, they had, during the previous week, reached the total of his profits. The liquidation of the last eight days showed no profit, and this was almost a loss for a speculator who was, like himself, accustomed to profits. Moreover, other mining stocks had undergone violent fluctuations. The market showed signs of a need for caution, if not for alarm. Business slowed down and the fall had affected several stocks which had until then risen daily. This consideration gave food for thought to Uncle Cyprien. Was it really a favorable time to take sides against his brother, to urge openly the necessity of a break with Mme. Chambannes? Did he not risk, if he took such a decided attitude, alienating the powerful sympathies which he enjoyed with the opposite camp—that is to say, the Chambannes and the whole band behind them, the Pums, the de Meuzes, and the Talloires, in short all his friends of the Bourse, and all his advisers? The point deserved to be settled only after proper consideration.
“It was then,” Thérèse concluded, “that the idea came to me to seek your help.... No one but you can save us, because you are the only one who has sufficient authority over father to pull him away from the dangerous path in which he goes deeper every day.”
“Unfortunate! Most unfortunate!” M. Raindal, the younger, repeated.