He snapped his snuff-box, put on his overshoes, and departed.
The next day after breakfast the baroness took the vicar aside and said to him, not without visible embarrassment:—
"My dear Monsieur Birotteau, you will think what I am about to ask of you very unjust and very inconsistent; but it is necessary, both for you and for us, that your lawsuit with Mademoiselle Gamard be withdrawn by resigning your claims, and also that you should leave my house."
As he heard these words the poor abbe turned pale.
"I am," she continued, "the innocent cause of your misfortunes, and, moreover, if it had not been for my nephew you would never have begun this lawsuit, which has now turned to your injury and to ours. But listen to me."
She told him succinctly the immense ramifications of the affair, and explained the serious nature of its consequences. Her own meditations during the night had told her something of the probable antecedents of Troubert's life; she was able, without misleading Birotteau, to show him the net so ably woven round him by revenge, and to make him see the power and great capacity of his enemy, whose hatred to Chapeloud, under whom he had been forced to crouch for a dozen years, now found vent in seizing Chapeloud's property and in persecuting Chapeloud in the person of his friend. The harmless Birotteau clasped his hands as if to pray, and wept with distress at the sight of human horrors that his own pure soul was incapable of suspecting. As frightened as though he had suddenly found himself at the edge of a precipice, he listened, with fixed, moist eyes in which there was no expression, to the revelations of his friend, who ended by saying: "I know the wrong I do in abandoning your cause; but, my dear abbe, family duties must be considered before those of friendship. Yield, as I do, to this storm, and I will prove to you my gratitude. I am not talking of your worldly interests, for those I take charge of. You shall be made free of all such anxieties for the rest of your life. By means of Monsieur de Bourbonne, who will know how to save appearances, I shall arrange matters so that you shall lack nothing. My friend, grant me the right to abandon you. I shall ever be your friend, though forced to conform to the axioms of the world. You must decide."
The poor, bewildered abbe cried aloud: "Chapeloud was right when he said that if Troubert could drag him by the feet out of his grave he would do it! He sleeps in Chapeloud's bed!"
"There is no use in lamenting," said Madame de Listomere, "and we have little time now left to us. How will you decide?"
Birotteau was too good and kind not to obey in a great crisis the unreflecting impulse of the moment. Besides, his life was already in the agony of what to him was death. He said, with a despairing look at his protectress which cut her to the heart, "I trust myself to you—I am but the stubble of the streets."
He used the Tourainean word "bourrier" which has no other meaning than a "bit of straw." But there are pretty little straws, yellow, polished, and shining, the delight of children, whereas the bourrier is straw discolored, muddy, sodden in the puddles, whirled by the tempest, crushed under feet of men.