“So it was you,” said the Baron, with a smile, “who wanted to see me married?—Wait a few minutes,” he added; “I will go upstairs and dress; I have some decent clothes in a trunk.”
Adeline, left alone, and looking round the squalid shop, melted into tears.
“He has been living here, and we rolling in wealth!” said she to herself. “Poor man, he has indeed been punished—he who was elegance itself.”
The stove-fitter returned to make his bow to his benefactress, and she desired him to fetch a coach. When he came back, she begged him to give little Atala Judici a home, and to take her away at once.
“And tell her that if she will place herself under the guidance of Monsieur the Cure of the Madeleine, on the day when she attends her first Communion I will give her thirty thousand francs and find her a good husband, some worthy young man.”
“My eldest son, then madame! He is two-and-twenty, and he worships the child.”
The Baron now came down; there were tears in his eyes.
“You are forcing me to desert the only creature who had ever begun to love me at all as you do!” said he in a whisper to his wife. “She is crying bitterly, and I cannot abandon her so—”
“Be quite easy, Hector. She will find a home with honest people, and I will answer for her conduct.”
“Well, then, I can go with you,” said the Baron, escorting his wife to the cab.