“Your letter to David was a forgery. It is in my possession. What would Henriette say in a court of law? I do not want to ruin you,” he added hastily, seeing how white Cérizet’s face grew.
“You want something more of me?” cried Cérizet.
“Well, here it is,” said Petit-Claud. “Follow me carefully. You will be a master printer in Angoulême in two months’ time . . . but you will not have paid for your business—you will not pay for it in ten years. You will work a long while yet for those that have lent you the money, and you will be the cat’s-paw of the Liberal party. . . . Now I shall draw up your agreement with Gannerac, and I can draw it up in such a way that you will have the business in your own hands one of these days. But—if the Liberals start a paper, if you bring it out, and if I am deputy public prosecutor, then you will come to an understanding with the Cointets and publish articles of such a nature that they will have the paper suppressed. . . . The Cointets will pay you handsomely for that service. . . . I know, of course, that you will be a hero, a victim of persecution; you will be a personage among the Liberals—a Sergeant Mercier, a Paul-Louis Courier, a Manual on a small scale. I will take care that they leave you your license. In fact, on the day when the newspaper is suppressed, I will burn this letter before your eyes. . . . Your fortune will not cost you much.”
A working man has the haziest notions as to the law with regard to forgery; and Cérizet, who beheld himself already in the dock, breathed again.
“In three years’ time,” continued Petit-Claud, “I shall be public prosecutor in Angoulême. You may have need of me some day; bear that in mind.”
“It’s agreed,” said Cérizet, “but you don’t know me. Burn that letter now and trust to my gratitude.”
Petit-Claud looked Cérizet in the face. It was a duel in which one man’s gaze is a scalpel with which he essays to probe the soul of another, and the eyes of that other are a theatre, as it were, to which all his virtue is summoned for display.
Petit-Claud did not utter a word. He lighted a taper and burned the letter. “He has his way to make,” he said to himself.
“Here is one that will go through fire and water for you,” said Cérizet.
David awaited the interview with the Cointets with a vague feeling of uneasiness; not, however, on account of the proposed partnership, nor for his own interests—he felt nervous as to their opinion of his work. He was in something the same position as a dramatic author before his judges. The inventor’s pride in the discovery so nearly completed left no room for any other feelings.