SPIRIT OF MODERN LAWS
By M. Bernard-Jean-Baptiste Macloud, Baron Bourlac.
Formerly attorney-general to the Royal Court of Rouen. Grand officer of the Legion of honor.
“Ha! the slayer of Madame’s daughter! of the Chevalier du Vissard! the man who condemned her to twenty years’ imprisonment!” said Godefroid, in a feeble voice. His legs gave way under him, and he dropped into a chair. “What a beginning!” he muttered.
“This matter, my dear Godefroid,” resumed Monsieur Joseph, “concerns us all. You have done your part; leave the rest to us. I beg you to have no more to do with it; go and fetch the things you have left behind you. Don’t say a word of all this. Practise absolute discretion. Tell the Baron de Bourlac to address himself to me. By that time we shall have decided how to act under the circumstances.”
Godefroid left him, took a cab, and went back as fast as he could to the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, filled with horror as he remembered that indictment signed with Bourlac’s name, the bloody drama ending on the scaffold, and Madame de la Chanterie’s imprisonment at Bicetre. He understood now the abandonment in which this former attorney-general, another Fourquier-Tinville in the public mind, was ending his days, and the true reasons for the concealment of his name.
“May Monsieur Joseph avenge her terribly!” he thought. As he uttered the wish in his own mind, he saw Auguste.
“What do you want of me?” he asked.
“My good friend, such a dreadful misfortune has overtaken us that I am almost mad. Wretches have come here and seized all my mother’s property, and they are going to put my grandfather in prison. But it is not on account of those misfortunes that I come to implore you,” said the lad, with Roman pride; “it is to ask you to do me a service such as people do to those who are condemned to die.”
“Go on, what is it?” said Godefroid.