"You know!" Monsieur de Boisguilbault interrupted him; "what do you know?"
And, as he asked this question, he seemed so indignant, and his lifeless eyes were filled with such threatening fire, that Emile, taken by surprise, remembered what was said at their first interview about his alleged irascibility, although it was said in such a tone that at the time he had been unable to view it in any other light than as a boastful joke.
"Answer me!" continued Monsieur de Boisguilbault, in a milder voice but with a bitter smile. "If you know the causes of my resentment, how dare you remind me of them?"
"If they are serious," replied Emile, "I certainly know nothing of them; for what I have been told is so frivolous that I am entirely unable to credit it, seeing how angry you are with me."
"Frivolous! frivolous! In heaven's name what has anyone told you? Be honest: don't hope to deceive me!"
"Since when, pray, have I given you the right to suspect me of anything so base as falsehood?" retorted Emile, becoming a little heated in his turn.
"Monsieur Cardonnet," said the marquis, taking the young man's arm in a hand that trembled like the leaf fluttering in the autumn breeze, "I do not think that you will seek to make sport of my suffering. Speak, therefore, and tell me what you know, for I must hear it."
"I know what people say and no more. They say that you broke off a friendship of twenty years' standing because of a quarrel about a deer. One of those creatures, which you had tamed for your amusement, escaped from your enclosure, and Monsieur de Châteaubrun, having fallen in with it a short distance from your park, was inconsiderate enough to kill it. It would have been exceedingly inconsiderate, it is true, as there are no deer in this region, so that he must have known that it was one of your pets; Monsieur de Châteaubrun has always been very absent-minded, and that is not an injury of the sort for which one cannot forgive a friend."
"Who told you that story? He, I suppose?"
"He has never mentioned the subject to me. It was Jean, the carpenter, another man whom you won't talk about, although you have been very kind to him, who told me that he has never known of any other reason for misunderstanding between you."