On the fifth day he was delighted, but scarcely surprised, to receive a letter from Madame Vernet saying that, as there seemed to be some complications concerning the necklace he had so generously and sweetly given her, and as she was a person of much delicacy of feeling, she was seriously thinking of returning it. He could address her at the Pigeon House at Melun.
Monsieur Bouchard replied by writing and flatly offering her five hundred francs, nearly six times the original value of the necklace. He himself took his letter out to the Pigeon House, and spent the entire evening there, on the chance that Madame Vernet might turn up. She did not, however. Next day he received a letter from her, all reproaches and hysterics; how could he offer her money!—her, the most disinterested, the most retiring of her sex! Money was nothing to her, least of all a trifling sum of five hundred francs. Monsieur Bouchard promptly replied, increasing his offer to a thousand francs. Another deeply injured note from Madame Vernet. At last, after five days of continual negotiation, Monsieur Bouchard haunting the Pigeon House every evening, terms were arranged—two thousand francs in exchange for the necklace.
It was infamous, but as Pierre reminded Monsieur Bouchard, one must always pay for one’s indiscretions. It would seem as if Madame Vernet had the direct inspiration of Satan himself in dealing with the too amiable and too susceptible Monsieur Bouchard. Not only had she given her address all along as the Pigeon House, but she appointed that abode of gaiety and champagne as the rendezvous where she was to meet Monsieur Bouchard and hand over the necklace in return for two thousand francs in notes of the Bank of France—Madame Vernet specified that there should be no cheque in the affair; she was so diffident; it always embarrassed her to go to a bank, and notes could be passed anywhere.
But Monsieur Bouchard was not wholly without discretion. He concluded he would rather not be seen in the act of handing over the money to Madame Vernet. Pierre—the foxy Pierre—should give her the money and should receive the necklace. So, on the evening specified, the two took the train for Melun, and went rattling out of Paris without dreaming of what was brewing behind them and likewise stewing ahead of them.
It was simply this: Élise had that evening found her opportunity to go around to the Rue Bassano, and in five minutes she had discovered everything Monsieur Bouchard and Pierre had been doing since they left the Rue Clarisse. The concierge knew all about the chase after Madame Vernet, the continual trotting out to Melun—nay, she knew that both Pierre and his master had an appointment with Madame Vernet at the Pigeon House that very evening. Élise returned, boiling with rage, to the Rue Clarisse, and with face and eyes blazing recounted to the trembling and agitated Mademoiselle Bouchard the horrid story of the frightful goings on in the Rue Bassano. And she had for audience not only poor Mademoiselle Bouchard, but Léontine de Meneval, who happened to be paying her weekly visit to Rue Clarisse. Léontine scarcely heard Élise’s fierce denunciations of the two reprobates in the Rue Bassano; all she really took in was the correspondence and the running to and fro about the necklace. She flew from the apartment, leaving Mademoiselle Bouchard in a state of collapse on the sofa, while Élise retailed every circumstance of horror she had found out about the renegades. Calling the first cab, Léontine drove rapidly home, rushed to her strong-box, and got the supposed paste necklace out. She had said to Monsieur Bouchard that anybody could tell at a glance that it was an imitation, yet it so glowed and sparkled in its white radiance that for the first time she began to suspect it was real. If so, it only deepened the mystery, and she felt she must solve it then and there. Again ordering a cab, she sprang into it and ordered the cabman to drive her to one of the great jewelry shops in the Avenue de l’Opéra. On reaching it she ordered the carriage to wait, and going into the shop, asked to see the proprietor. He advanced, politely, and Léontine, taking the necklace from about her neck, where she wore it under her high bodice, said, with such calmness as she could muster:
“Will you kindly give me some idea of the value of this?”
The jeweller took it up, examined it for a moment, and said:
“About forty thousand francs, I should say, Madame. The stones are remarkably well matched, better than in many costlier necklaces.”