“Their home life became painful. Bregeac grew more irritated every day. He writes importunate letters to Etienne d’Asteux, questions the child, who does [[228]]not answer, persecutes his wife, threatens her, in a word lives in a state of growing excitement.
“Then, one on the top of the other, two events bring his exasperation to its height. His wife dies of pleurisy and he learns that his father-in-law, attacked by a serious illness, is doomed to an early death. Bregeac falls into a panic. What will become of the secret, if Etienne d’Asteux does not speak? What will become of the treasure if Etienne d’Asteux leaves it to his grand-daughter Aurelie, on the condition of her coming into possession of it on attaining her majority, as he talked of doing in one of his letters? In either case Bregeac would get nothing. All these riches, which he presumed to be fabulous, would pass him by. It was necessary, at any cost, by any means, to learn the secret.
“These means a fatal chance put in his way. In handling a case of robbery and hunting down the thieves he lay hands on his three old comrades of Cherbourg, Jodot, Loubeaux, and Ancivel. The temptation was too great for him. He succumbs to it and tells them the story. They come to an agreement on the spot: for the three rogues it means immediate liberty. They will go straight to the Provençal village, in which the old man is in his dying agony, and tear from him, by force if necessary, the information they must have.
“The plot failed. The old man, assaulted in the [[229]]middle of the night by the three blackguards, summoned to answer their questions and tortured, dies without speaking a word. The three murderers take to flight. Bregeac has on his conscience a crime from which he has reaped no benefit.”
Ralph paused and looked at Bregeac. Bregeac said nothing. Was he refusing to defend himself against improbable accusations? Was he confessing the truth of them? You would have said that all this was of no importance to him and that the recalling of the past, terrible as it might be, could not increase his present distress.
Aurelie had listened without displaying any more than he the impression the story made on her. But Marescal was recovering little by little his coolness, astonished certainly that Limézy revealed before him facts of such gravity and handed over to him, bound hand and foot, his old enemy Bregeac. And once more he looked at his watch.
Ralph went on: “The crime then was useless, but the results of it were to make themselves severely felt, in spite of the fact that justice had never known anything about it. In the first place one of his accomplices, Jacques Ancivel, in his terror fled for America. Before going, he confided everything to his wife. She came to Bregeac and compelled him, under penalty of immediate denunciation, to sign a paper in which he took upon himself all the responsibility for the crime against [[230]]Etienne d’Asteux and declared the innocence of the three guilty men. Bregeac was frightened and stupidly signed the paper. Handed over to Jodot, the paper was enclosed by him and Loubeaux in a bottle which they found under the bolster of Etienne d’Asteux and which they had kept at every risk. From that time they had Bregeac in their power and could blackmail him whenever they wanted to.
“They had him in their power; but they are intelligent rogues and they prefer, rather than to exhaust him by blackmail in a small way, to let him rise in the administration. They have only one idea in their minds, the discovery of that treasure of which Bregeac had had the imprudence to speak to them. Bregeac still knows nothing about it. No one knows anything about it, except the little girl who has seen the country in which it is, and who in the mysterious depths of her mind, keeps obstinately the silence imposed upon her. It is necessary then to wait and watch. When she leaves the convent to which Bregeac has sent her, they will act.
“Well, she comes out of the convent, and on the very next day, two years ago, Bregeac receives a letter in which Jodot and Loubeaux inform him that they are entirely at his service to hunt for the treasure. That he must make the girl speak and pass the information on to them. If he does not——
“This letter is a sudden clap of thunder to Bregeac. [[231]]Twelve years had passed; he hoped that the affair was definitely buried. He had even ceased to be interested in it. It recalled to him a crime which horrified him, and a period of his life that he remembered only with anguish. And lo! All these shameful things rise up out of the darkness! And with them his old comrades rise again. They harass him. What is he to do?