“Opposing him, myself.”
He made his preparations with the most minute care and with all the more vigor because each of his adversaries was redoubling his precautions. Bregeac, without any definite proof against the nurse who gave information to Marescal or against the maid whom Ralph had bribed, discharged them both. The shutters of the windows in the front of his house were shut. On the other hand, the agents of Marescal began to show themselves in the street. Jodot only no longer showed [[183]]himself. Disarmed doubtless by the loss of the document in which Bregeac had written his confession, he must have buried himself in some safe retreat.
This period lasted for a fortnight. Ralph obtained an introduction, under a false name, to the wife of the Minister who openly protected Marescal, and succeeded in becoming uncommonly intimate with this rather mature lady, who was exceedingly jealous, and from whom her husband kept nothing secret. She was transported with joy by Ralph’s attentions. Without being aware of the part she was playing and ignorant moreover of Marescal’s passion for Aurelie, from hour to hour she kept Ralph informed of the Commissary’s intentions, of his plans with regard to Aurelie, and of the method by which he sought, with the Minister’s help, to smash Bregeac and those who supported him.
Ralph was frightened: the attack was so well planned that he asked himself if he ought not to anticipate it, to carry off Aurelie, and so bring it to nothing before it was put into execution.
“And what then?” he said to himself. “What should we gain by flight? The conflict would remain the same and everything would begin all over again.”
He was able to resist the temptation.
Returning home one evening, he found a note awaiting him. The Minister’s wife informed him that the final decisions had been made, among others that the [[184]]arrest of Aurelie had been fixed for the next day, July the 12th, at three o’clock in the afternoon.
“Poor little girl with the green eyes,” thought Ralph. “Will she have confidence in me in everything and in spite of everything, as I asked her? Will there not again be tears and anguish for her?”
He slept peacefully, like a great commander on the eve of battle. He rose at eight o’clock. The decisive day had begun.
Then, towards noon, as his maid, his old nurse Victoire, returned by the servants’ entrance with her basket of provisions, six men posted on the staircase, forced their way into the kitchen.