“What have yonder folk done to you, uncle, that you should mix yourself up in their affairs?” inquired Léonie, with very perceptible tartness.
“They are in trouble, my girl,” said the curé, and he told the Postels about Lucien at the Courtois’ mill.
“Oh! so that is the way he came back from Paris, is it?” exclaimed Postel. “Yet he had some brains, poor fellow, and he was ambitious, too. He went out to look for wool, and comes home shorn. But what does he want here? His sister is frightfully poor; for all these geniuses, David and Lucien alike, know very little about business. There was some talk of him at the Tribunal, and, as judge, I was obliged to sign the warrant of execution. It was a painful duty. I do not know whether the sister’s circumstances are such that Lucien can go to her; but in any case the little room that he used to occupy here is at liberty, and I shall be pleased to offer it to him.”
“That is right, Postel,” said the priest; he bestowed a kiss on the infant slumbering in Léonie’s arms, and, adjusting his cocked hat, prepared to walk out of the shop.
“You will dine with us, uncle, of course,” said Mme. Postel; “if once you meddle in these people’s affairs, it will be some time before you have done. My husband will drive you back again in his little pony-cart.”
Husband and wife stood watching their valued, aged relative on his way into Angoulême. “He carries himself well for his age, all the same,” remarked the druggist.
By this time David had been in hiding for eleven days in a house only two doors away from the druggist’s shop, which the worthy ecclesiastic had just quitted to climb the steep path into Angoulême with the news of Lucien’s present condition.
When the Abbé Marron debouched upon the Place du Murier he found three men, each one remarkable in his own way, and all of them bearing with their whole weight upon the present and future of the hapless voluntary prisoner. There stood old Séchard, the tall Cointet, and his confederate, the puny limb of the law, three men representing three phases of greed as widely different as the outward forms of the speakers. The first had it in his mind to sell his own son; the second, to betray his client; and the third, while bargaining for both iniquities, was inwardly resolved to pay for neither. It was nearly five o’clock. Passers-by on their way home to dinner stopped a moment to look at the group.
“What the devil can old Séchard and the tall Cointet have to say to each other?” asked the more curious.
“There was something on foot concerning that miserable wretch that leaves his wife and child and mother-in-law to starve,” suggested some.