“Death!” cried Madame d’Hauteserre, fainting away.
The abbe now came in with his sister, who stopped to speak to Catherine and Madame Durieu.
“We haven’t even seen your cursed senator!” said Michu.
“Madame Marion, Madame Grevin, Monsieur Grevin, the senator’s valet, and Violette all tell another tale,” replied Pigoult, with the sour smile of magisterial conviction.
“I don’t understand a thing about it,” said Michu, dumbfounded by his reply, and beginning now to believe that his masters and himself were entangled in some plot which had been laid against them.
Just then the party from the stables returned. Laurence went up to Madame d’Hauteserre, who recovered her senses enough to say: “The penalty is death!”
“Death!” repeated Laurence, looking at the four gentlemen.
The word excited a general terror, of which Giguet, formerly instructed by Corentin, took immediate advantage.
“Everything can be arranged,” he said, drawing the Marquis de Simeuse into a corner of the dining-room. “Perhaps after all it is nothing but a joke; you’ve been a soldier and soldiers understand each other. Tell me, what have you really done with the senator? If you have killed him—why, that’s the end of it! But if you have only locked him up, release him, for you see for yourself your game is balked. Do this and I am certain the director of the jury and the senator himself will drop the matter.”
“We know absolutely nothing about it,” said the marquis.