“I will use you as an instrument against Launcelot Darrell, if you please,” Eleanor answered, “since it seems that you have quarrelled with your fast friend.”
“But yes, madame. When pussy has pulled the chestnuts out of the fire, she is thenceforward the most unuseful of animals, and they chase her. Do you understand, madame?” cried the Frenchman, with a sudden transformation from the monkey to the tiger phase of his character, that was scarcely agreeable. “Do you understand?” he hissed. “Monsieur Launcelot has ennuied himself of me. I am chased! Me!”
He struck his gloved fingers upon his breast to give emphasis to this last word.
“It is of the last canaille, this young man,” he continued, with a shrug of disgust. “Ingrate, poltroon, scoundrel! When the forge will, forge at my suggestion by the clerk of the avoué de Vindsor, has been read, and all is finish, and no one dispute his possession, and he enter his new domain as master, the real nature of the man reveal itself. The genuine will is burn, he think. He defies himself of his dear friend, this poor Bourdon, and he will not even tell him who would have benefit by that genuine will. It is burn! Did he not see it scorch and blaze with his own eyes? There is nothing to fear; and for this poor comrade, who has helped my gentleman to a great fortune he is less than that!”
Monsieur Bourdon snapped his fingers derisively, and stared fiercely at Eleanor. Then he relapsed into a sardonic smile, and went on.
“At first things go on charmingly. Monsieur Launcelot is more sweet than the honey. It is new to him to be rich, and for the first month he scatters his money with full hands. Then suddenly he stops. He cries out that he is on the road to ruin; that his friend’s claims are monstrous. Faith of a gentleman, I was, perhaps, extravagant; for I am a little gamester, and I like to see life en grand seigneur. A bas la moutarde, I said. My friend is millionnaire. I am no more commercial traveller. Imagine, then, when mon garçon shuts up his—what is it you call it, then—cheque-book, and refuse me a paltry sum of a thousand francs. I smile in his face,” said Monsieur Bourdon, nodding his head slowly, with half-closed eyes, “and I say, ‘Bon jour, Monsieur Darrell; I shall make you hear some news of me before I am much older.’”
“You did not tell him that the will was in your possession?”
“A thousand thunders! No!” exclaimed the Frenchman. “I was not so much foolish as to show him the beneath the cards. I come over here to consult a friend, an avoué.”
“And he tells you——?”
“No matter. You are better than the avoué, madame. You hate Launcelot Darrell; this will is all you want to prove him a cheat and a blacksmith—pardon, a forger.”