“Ah, had it been Gerard, I should have reasoned with him. Gerard can be made to laugh at follies, and the man who laughs can be made to abandon. Fool! Folly! You see, those are the only words I am able to think of. Answer a fool according to his folly. That is excellent advice. Molière’s, is it not? I tried to bring it into practice to-day.”
“Deeds like his,” she said, “should still be preventable by lettres de cachet. They are worse than crimes. A name such as ours may be scotched by the reprobates who bear it, but it takes a fool, such as you laugh at, to kill it outright.”
“Whom would you lock up? Ursula? Do you know, I fancy Ursula is in no way to blame. She is really a good little girl.”
But the Baroness shook her head. The Baron rose.
“Well, it can’t be helped,” he said, yawning. “That is the beginning and the end. I wonder what Louisa will say. At any rate, the house is still ours; après nous le déluge. Otto is such an exemplary Noah; he is sure to be saved when it comes. By-the-bye, I had written to Labary about rehanging the west bedroom, but such experiences as this take away all one’s pleasure in things of that kind. What’s the use of working for such a son as Otto?”
With which momentous but unanswerable question he strolled out into the grounds.
Louisa, when informed shortly after by her sister of what had happened, took off her spectacles, laid down the book she was reading, and said,
“Otto is, at least, the only member of this family possessed of marked originality.”
The Freule van Borck’s view of the question was not without importance, for she had some money to leave where she liked. She was exceedingly stingy, and her savings were presumed to be large.