“Do you hear that, my good fellow?” said la Peyrade, seizing upon Brigitte’s speech. “When I have pleaded, the marriage is to take place. Your sister is frankness itself; she, at least, doesn’t practise diplomacy.”
“Diplomacy!” echoed Brigitte. “I’d like to see myself creeping underground in matters. I say things as I think them. The workman has worked, and he ought to have his pay.”
“Do be silent,” cried Thuillier, stamping his foot; “you don’t say a word that doesn’t turn the knife in the wound.”
“The knife in the wound?” said Brigitte, inquiringly. “Ah ca! are you two quarrelling?”
“I told you,” said Thuillier, “that la Peyrade had returned our promises; and the reason he gives is that we are asking him another service for Celeste’s hand. He thinks he has done us enough without it.”
“He has done us some services, no doubt,” said Brigitte; “but it seems to me that we have not been ungrateful to him. Besides, it was he who made the blunder, and I think it rather odd he should now wish to leave us in the lurch.”
“Your reasoning, mademoiselle,” said la Peyrade, “might have some appearance of justice if I were the only barrister in Paris; but as the streets are black with them, and as, only yesterday, Thuillier himself spoke of engaging some more important lawyer than myself, I have not the slightest scruple in refusing to defend him. Now, as to the marriage, in order that it may not be made the object of another brutal and forcible demand upon me, I here renounce it in the most formal manner, and nothing now prevents Mademoiselle Colleville from accepting Monsieur Felix Phellion and all his advantages.”
“As you please, my dear monsieur,” said Brigitte, “if that’s your last word. We shall not be at a loss to find a husband for Celeste,—Felix Phellion or another. But you must permit me to tell you that the reason you give is not the true one. We can’t go faster than the fiddles. If the marriage were settled to-day, there are the banns to publish; you have sense enough to know that Monsieur le maire can’t marry you before the formalities are complied with, and before then Thuillier’s case will have been tried.”
“Yes,” said la Peyrade, “and if I lose the case it will be I who have sent him to prison,—just as yesterday it was I who brought about the seizure.”
“As for that, it seems to me that if you had written nothing the police would have found nothing to bite.”