“You have misunderstood me,” he said, with a covert smile; “I meant that I could not assist a man who plays against me just as l’Etourdi played against Mascarille.”
“What can you mean?”
“This will prove to you whether I am magnanimous or not.”
He gave Madame Rabourdin the memorandum stolen by Dutocq, pointing out to her the passage in which her husband had so ably analyzed him.
“Read that.”
Celestine recognized the handwriting, read the paper, and turned pale under the blow.
“All the ministries, the whole service is treated in the same way,” said des Lupeaulx.
“Happily,” she said, “you alone possess this document. I cannot explain it, even to myself.”
“The man who stole it is not such a fool as to let me have it without keeping a copy for himself; he is too great a liar to admit it, and too clever in his business to give it up. I did not even ask him for it.”
“Who is he?”