"Be it so, be it so!" cried the baron, seeming to revive from the tone of confidence with which I spoke; and, taking the pen, he wrote the words I put into his mouth. He read it over, and then gave it to me, and imagination can scarcely do justice to the feelings with which I received it.
I then assigned to him the bond; and, while I wrote, he remained with his eyes fixed musingly upon the ground.
"Henry," he said, taking it when I had done, but scarcely looking at the signature, "you think that I am rather weak to be so swayed by a woman so criminal that I should fear her. But believe me when I swear to you, that she holds her power over me by a gross falsehood. A few unfortunate words, written thoughtlessly, and seeming, as she has turned them, to countenance a deed that I abhorred, has bound me to misery and slavery."
"I grieve, sir, most truly," I replied; "but I hope the time will come when you will trust me more fully, and I doubt not then to be able----"
At that moment, however, one of the huissiers opened the door, saying, "Monsieur le Baron, the sale is about to be proclaimed." We both hurried to the house where it was to take place; but, ere we reached it, the proclamation was made, and the President des Chappes was in the act of saying, "I prohibit the sale in the name of Henry Count de Cerons and Des Bois."
"Speak! speak, sir!" I whispered to the baron; "forbid it also, that no cause may be entered on my part."
"I prohibit the sale also," he said, raising his voice aloud; and then added, in an ordinary tone, "I have just received intelligence which alters altogether my intentions."
"You have, sir?" exclaimed the Seigneur de Blaye, advancing with a menacing air. "Then you are, as I trust you remember, my debtor to the amount of forty thousand livres."
"Pardon me, sir!" said the baron, in that cold, bitter tone which I had more than once heard him use towards myself in former days, "I think, if I read this paper right, that it is you who are my debtor to the amount of twenty thousand. We will settle our accounts whenever you think fit."
The young man looked at the paper, and evidently recognised it well; then turned his eyes upon me, saying, "I understand to whom I am most a debtor, and will take occasion to settle my accounts with him before a week be over."