"Oh! your wife—your wife's a fool! I saw Julien come out too."
"Julien was not with us; he had no more idea that we were downstairs than we had that he was in the gallery. Besides, even if he had been with us, what is this mania of yours for incriminating——"
"Encriminating!" interposed Monsieur Antoine, all whose errors in language we do not attempt to reproduce; "I encriminate what is encriminatable! And what about the long walk at night, arm-in-arm, from the hôtel d'Ormonde to the pavilion, where madame remained, by the way, till three o'clock in the morning? Madame André may have been present at the conversation. I don't deny that; but that's another reason for encriminating, as you call it, you ass of an attorney! And all the meetings in the garden in the evening, when madame never goes in till two o'clock—often later?"
"Where do you pick up this servants' gossip?" cried Marcel, indignantly—"these antechamber slanders?"
"I don't go into antechambers, and I don't get my information from servants; I have my own little police. I am rich enough to pay shrewd ones who watch and tell me the truth. As to that, I don't make any secret of it. I wanted to find out madame's sentiments, the reasons for the affront she put upon me by employing Master Julien to show me the door; that was my right; and, if I revenged myself as I could, that, too, was my right."
Madame d'Estrelle, being determined to tell everything and to take all the consequences, listened to Uncle Antoine with proud impassibility. The brutality of his language, which she attributed to chronic madness, and excused because of his lack of education, did not wound her like the premeditated, deliberate impertinence of the marchioness. Marcel, who watched her during his uncle's fine discourse, mistook the disdainful serenity of her smile for a denial more eloquent than any words could be.
"Why, look at her," he cried, shaking the rich man to make him hold his peace; "observe the paltry effect of the fables and lies you have been made to swallow! You cannot bring the faintest flush to her brow, and her silence confounds your brutal eloquence!"
"I will speak in a moment," said Julie; "let Monsieur Thierry go on. As you see, he does not anger me, and I am waiting until he has finished his account of my conduct and has given me an account of his. You are under the ban of my indignation, Monsieur Antoine Thierry, do not forget it. You claim that you do not deserve it; it remains for you to prove that to my satisfaction."
The old man was confounded for a moment; then, having determined upon his course, he replied:
"Very well, despise me if you choose; I don't care much about that. I have my own esteem and that's enough for me! I was angry, true! I talked about you angrily, vindictively, I don't deny it—and yet I don't hate you, and it rests with you whether you will have me for a friend."