Balthazar colored, and replied with an embarrassed air:—
“I don’t know, but Lemulquinier can tell you. That worthy fellow knows more about my affairs than I do myself.”
Marguerite rang for the valet: when he came she studied, almost involuntarily, the faces of the two old men.
“What does monsieur want?” asked Lemulquinier.
Marguerite, who was all pride and dignity, felt an oppression at her heart as she perceived from the tone and manner of the servant that some mortifying familiarity had grown up between her father and the companion of his labors.
“My father cannot make out the account of what he owes in this place without you,” she said.
“Monsieur,” began Lemulquinier, “owes—”
At these words Balthazar made a sign to his valet which Marguerite intercepted; it humiliated her.
“Tell me all that my father owes,” she said.
“Monsieur owes, here, about three thousand francs to an apothecary who is a wholesale dealer in drugs; he has supplied us with pearl-ash and lead, and zinc and the reagents—”