This direct question was too much for Monsieur Antoine. He turned deathly pale, then flushed with anger, swore, tore his hair and shouted in a frenzy of rage:
"Did she tell you that? She pretends, she dares to say——"
"Nothing at all. I have never been able to extort a word from her about you; but I have had my suspicions, and now you have confessed. Tell me everything, uncle; that will be the best way, for it will relieve you, and you will have had a good heart-searching for once in your life."
Fully half an hour passed before the ex-armorer had exhausted all the spleen and bile of which his heart was full against Marcel, against Madame Thierry and against his deceased brother. When Marcel, who worried him cruelly, had succeeded in exhausting him, he carried his point, and old Antoine told him what follows, by fits and starts, forcing his nephew to extract from him bit by bit the secret of his life, which was also the secret of his character.
Forty years prior to the period of this narrative, Mademoiselle de Meuil, having eloped with André Thierry, had gone with her fiancé to seek shelter with Antoine Thierry, who was already rich and still quite young. Until that time the two brothers had lived on good terms with each other. While she remained in hiding at the hôtel de Melcy, Mademoiselle de Meuil had manifested sincere friendship for the armorer and perfect confidence in him. André, being prosecuted by the Meuil family and in danger of being consigned to the Bastille, had been compelled to leave Paris, to avert suspicion from the right quarter, while certain influential friends of his endeavored to adjust his affairs and gradually succeeded in so doing.
During this separation of several months, Mademoiselle de Meuil, constantly beset by the most painful anxiety, was more than once tempted to return to her parents in order to relieve the man she loved from the dangers and misfortunes which threatened him. More than once she discussed the subject frankly with André's brother, setting forth her fears and asking his advice. Then it was that Antoine conceived a strange idea, not treacherous and in no wise induced by passion, but in which his sensitive self-esteem was soon deeply involved. We will allow him to speak for a moment.
"The girl was ruined, although she had not lived with my brother as his wife. She was too far compromised to be taken back into the family, and the very best that she could hope for was to end her days in a convent. My brother seemed to me even more completely ruined than she was. A lettre de cachet had been issued against him, and that was no joke in those days. He might be shut up for twenty years, or for his whole life—who could say? And as the young lady told me all this herself, crying out every minute: 'What shall I do, Monsieur Antoine? Mon Dieu! what shall I do?' the idea came into my head of saving them both by marrying the girl. I was not in love with her, no! the devil take me if I lie! I should have loved any other woman as much, and I had never given a thought to marriage. If she had not been of noble birth, which gave her—not in my eyes, for I have no prejudices—in many people's eyes a sort of distinction, I shouldn't have paid much attention to her. Are you laughing? What are you laughing at, you ass of an attorney?"
"I am not laughing," said Marcel. "Go on. You were telling me about the bright idea that came into your head."
"So it did, and it wasn't any more foolish than my excellent brother's idea. Was he an eagle in those days, I would ask? No, he was a little dauber, who hadn't succeeded in laying by four sous, and no one thought anything of him. Was he any better looking than I was, or younger, or better bred? We were both brought up just alike; I was five years older, that's all. I wasn't the ugliest, and he wasn't a beauty by any means! He knew how to talk; he was always a chatterer. I said less, but what I said was solid. Neither one of us was more of a plebeian than the other, for we had the same father and mother. I had already saved nearly a million which no one knew anything about! With a million a man can do many things that my brother couldn't do: he can put the law to sleep and appease angry parents, and obtain patrons who never sleep; with a million one can even reach the king's ear, and surely one can marry a girl who has nothing at all. If society makes a fuss, it's because everyone would like to have the million in his own pocket. In fact, my million proved that even if I was not quite so fine a talker as my brother, it wasn't for want of wit and genius. That is what the girl ought to have understood. I didn't ask her to love me right away, but to love her André enough to forget him and keep him from going to prison and rotting there. Very good; instead of appreciating my good sense and generosity, lo and behold! the prude loses her temper, calls me a boor and a wicked brother and a dishonorable man, and decamps from my house without telling me where she's going, staking all to win all, and leaving a letter for me in which all the thanks she gives me is a promise never to betray my treachery to Monsieur André! I confess that I have never forgiven her for that, and that I never shall forgive her. As for my excellent brother, he behaved in a way that disgusted me almost as much as madame did. I didn't choose to wait till his prude of a wife had sold me. When I saw that he was out of his difficulties and married, I told him the whole story, just as I have told it to you. He didn't lose his temper; on the contrary, he thanked me for my good intentions, but then he began to laugh. You know what a frivolous, weak-brained creature he was! Well, my idea struck him as very comical, and he made fun of me. Thereupon I broke with him, and I would never see the wife or the husband again."
"At last!" said Marcel, "now I know where we are. But Julien? Why do you bear Julien a grudge, for he wasn't born at the time of your grievance?"