Was it mere coincidence, or had the man really some power? Or had that scandalous press campaign been more or less directly his own work? Had he used it to intimidate me?
At any rate, the enigmatical German kept his promises. My husband, who had an abject fear of him, kept the pearls in his studio, and the German, who came every three or four months, insisted on seeing the pearls and then bought a few of them. He always managed to call when I was not at home, but once or twice I saw him leave the villa in the Impasse just as I entered it. He was small and dark, and had a very Jewish nose. It was winter when I saw him, and the collar of his overcoat was turned up to his ears. It was quite evident that he did not wish his face to be seen.
My husband corresponded secretly with the man, and sold, through the latter's agency, a number of pictures to various persons in Germany. The whole matter was so strange that I repeatedly attempted to drag from my husband all that he knew. I had an impression that he was aware of the origin of the necklace, and that there were some clauses in his compact with the man of which he had not acquainted me. But whenever I mentioned the German he at once ran away and shut himself up in his studio.
Two or three years after the death of Félix Faure I looked into the drawer in which the pearls were kept and found they had all gone, except, of course, the ten which I had put aside.
A few days later my husband said to me: "The 'German' has been again. His attitude has changed for the worse. He now demands the ten large pearls you have kept, and also the papers of President Faure."
I refused point blank. The pearls I kept in reserve, for some unforeseen emergency. As for the documents, I would sooner have burned them, in spite of their importance and of the memories attached to them, than hand them to that German who might have used them for Heaven knew what dangerous purpose.
"What did he say when you gave him my reply?" I asked my husband after the man had called.
"He said he could afford to wait... but he would gain his ends, 'in time.'"
A few weeks later, having finished some work I had been doing on a historical costume which my husband needed for a painting, representing a sixteenth-century nobleman reading by a window—the picture was intended for the salon—I went up to the studio. An old Italian model, a man called Giganti, was there.
"Monsieur went out for a while, and told me to wait for him, Madame.... He seemed rather upset...."