The next day Cerizet did not fail to appear at the rendezvous given to him. Examined, at first, through the wicket of the door, he was admitted, after giving his name, into the house, and was ushered immediately to the study of Monsieur du Portail, whom he found at his desk.
Without rising, and merely making a sign to his guest to take a chair, the little old man continued the letter he was then writing. After sealing it with wax, with a care and precision that denoted a nature extremely fastidious and particular, or else a man accustomed to discharge diplomatic functions, du Portail rang for Bruneau, his valet, and said, as he gave him the letter:—
“For the justice-of-peace of the arrondissement.”
Then he carefully wiped the steel pen he had just used, restored to their places, symmetrically, all the displaced articles on his desk, and it was only when these little arrangements were completed that he turned to Cerizet, and said:—
“You know, of course, that we lost that poor Monsieur Toupillier last night?”
“No, really?” said Cerizet, putting on the most sympathetic air he could manage. “This is my first knowledge of it.”
“But you probably expected it. When one gives a dying man an immense bowl of hot wine, which has also been narcotized,—for the Perrache woman slept all night in a sort of lethargy after drinking a small glass of it,—it is evident that the catastrophe has been hastened.”
“I am ignorant, monsieur,” said Cerizet, with dignity, “of what Madame Cardinal may have given to her uncle. I have no doubt committed a great piece of thoughtlessness in assisting this woman to obtain an inheritance to which she assured me she had legal rights; but as to attempting the life of that old pauper, I am quite incapable of such a thing; nothing of the kind ever entered my mind.”
“You wrote me this letter, I think,” said du Portail, abruptly, taking from beneath a bohemian glass bowl a paper which he offered to Cerizet.
“A letter?” replied Cerizet, with the hesitation of a man who doesn’t know whether to lie or speak the truth.