“Poor child,” he said, touching her cheek softly, “you mean well; but you don’t know the world. Perhaps my mother will be able to suggest something.”
“Yes, go,” she said, releasing him, and letting her arms drop by her side.
There was a clatter of small steps outside, an impatient rattle of the handle, and Raoul rushed in.
“Father, there’s a monkey—a real monkey—in the court! I’ve given him a piece of melon, and he’s eaten that, and a bunch of nuts, and he’s cracked them; and now I want a sou, and his master says he’ll make a bow for it. Oh, I do wish I might have a monkey!”
Léon, on his way to the door, pointed to the boy. “You propose that I should ruin him,” he said, and was gone.
Poor mother! She caught her child in her arms, while he struggled impatiently.
“Two sous, two sous, please, quick! Oh, it is the dearest little monkey! Don’t you think we could buy it? Jean could take care of it, and it could sleep in my bed.”
He went off with his two sous, and Nathalie dropped into a chair, the anguish of the moment in her eyes. What future lay before the boy? A tarnished name, a dishonoured father? Her thoughts travelled wildly round; she was like a wounded creature, seeking escape from the hunters. How confident she had been, how blind! Now the flitting distrust she had refused to see in the lawyer’s eyes stood before her alive and menacing. Was there any other way but that terrible one to which she had been forced to point? Could Léon ever endure it? What was it? What was it? She pressed her fingers on her quivering eyelids; trial, confession, perhaps a prison—the words printed themselves on her brain, and hung there like leaden weights. And she—oh, cruel, cruel!—she was the one to urge them upon him. God, must it be so? She slipped off the chair on her knees, her lips forming no petitions, because her whole being became a living prayer.
How long she lay she never knew, but there Claire found her at last. Claire was white, rigid, fiercely wroth. She had been with her mother when Léon rushed in, so taken up with the burden of his misery that he poured it all out without hesitation. His first cry had been: “I am lost! Rodoin says he can do nothing, and that villain Lemaire is determined to ruin me. I ask you whether, after all my father did for Monsieur de Cadanet, I had not a right to the loan? He flourished it in my face. I believe he meant me to take it. And if I had not repaid it, then they might have the right to say something; but every farthing went back. What am I to do? Mother, unless you can suggest something, I shall go mad!”
He might have rambled on, striking out blindly, if Claire had not angrily stopped him.