“If you are an honest man,” Derville went on in an undertone, “how could you remain in my debt?”
The old soldier blushed as a young girl might when accused by her mother of a clandestine love affair.
“What! Madame Ferraud has not paid you?” cried he in a loud voice.
“Paid me?” said Derville. “She wrote to me that you were a swindler.”
The Colonel cast up his eyes in a sublime impulse of horror and imprecation, as if to call heaven to witness to this fresh subterfuge.
“Monsieur,” said he, in a voice that was calm by sheer huskiness, “get the gendarmes to allow me to go into the lock-up, and I will sign an order which will certainly be honored.”
At a word from Derville to the sergeant he was allowed to take his client into the room, where Hyacinthe wrote a few lines, and addressed them to the Comtesse Ferraud.
“Send her that,” said the soldier, “and you will be paid your costs and the money you advanced. Believe me, monsieur, if I have not shown you the gratitude I owe you for your kind offices, it is not the less there,” and he laid his hand on his heart. “Yes, it is there, deep and sincere. But what can the unfortunate do? They live, and that is all.”
“What!” said Derville. “Did you not stipulate for an allowance?”
“Do not speak of it!” cried the old man. “You cannot conceive how deep my contempt is for the outside life to which most men cling. I was suddenly attacked by a sickness—disgust of humanity. When I think that Napoleon is at Saint-Helena, everything on earth is a matter of indifference to me. I can no longer be a soldier; that is my only real grief. After all,” he added with a gesture of childish simplicity, “it is better to enjoy luxury of feeling than of dress. For my part, I fear nobody’s contempt.”