“Daubrecq?”
“Daubrecq.”
Clarisse Mergy put her hands together to hide the blushes on her forehead. She continued, in her tired voice:
“Daubrecq had taken his revenge. On the day after my husband turned our unhappy child out of the house, Daubrecq sent us a most cynical letter in which he revealed the odious part which he had played and the machinations by which he had succeeded in depraving our son. And he went on to say, ‘The reformatory, one of these days.... Later on, the assize-court.... And then, let us hope and trust, the scaffold!’”
Lupin exclaimed:
“What! Did Daubrecq plot the present business?”
“No, no, that is only an accident. The hateful prophecy was just a wish which he expressed. But oh, how it terrified me! I was ailing at the time; my other son, my little Jacques, had just been born. And every day we heard of some fresh misdeed of Gilbert’s—forgeries, swindles—so much so that we spread the news, in our immediate surroundings, of his departure for abroad, followed by his death. Life was a misery; and it became still more so when the political storm burst in which my husband was to meet his death.”
“What do you mean?”
“A word will be enough: my husband’s name was on the list of the Twenty-seven.”
“Ah!”