"The affair must be settled within ten days, at the latest," Bressieux was saying. "The two American dealers are to sail December eighth. I know them. They won't postpone their sailing. They want to carry the tapestries with them. If the thing drags, they'll back out. The other dealers haven't the means to make up the whole amount. In that case it's a public sale, with all its risks. Everybody will know that the marquis is embarrassed. You won't find the four millions. It's in his interest that I speak to you."
"And it's his interest that I have in mind, no less," replied Chaffin. "Four millions? The debts would be paid,—the largest ones,—and perhaps he would consent to cut down his establishment. But he won't allow me to mention the subject. I didn't dare even to show him the summonses last week. He refuses to acknowledge, what he is well aware of, however, that he is ruined. The idea that I, who know how attached he is to this whole château,—he wouldn't let so much as a cup be sold,—should suggest to him to sell everything at one stroke, tapestries, furniture, portraits!"
"But is he absolutely driven to such a sale, or is he not?"
"He is."
"Has he any way whatever of escaping it?"
"He has not, unless millions should fall from the sky."
"Or a friend, Jaubourg, for example, should leave him his fortune?" insinuated Bressieux.
"He would leave it to Monsieur le Comte Landri," said Chaffin hastily, "who would not accept it." He continued, after a pause during which the two men avoided looking at each other, like people who know a thing, know that they know it, and do not choose to admit it: "Oh, well! it's through Monsieur le Comte Landri that I will act. I owe it to him, to him as well, that his fortune shall not be swallowed up in the pit. I will tell him the truth, and that this offer to purchase all the treasures of the château in a lump is an unhoped-for piece of luck, the only way of gaining time. It will be enough for him to revoke the general power of attorney that he gave his father, and to demand his principal. Monsieur le Marquis cannot give it to him. To avoid undergoing that humiliation before his son, he will give way.—But I hear his voice. This very evening I will speak to Landri. You shall have his answer at once."
And they went forward together to meet the motor from which M. de Claviers and Landri were alighting. The two confederates had not uttered a word which placed them at each other's mercy, and yet the real basis of this interview was one of those villainous piratical "deals" of which the international traffic in antiquities has made more than one of late years in France and elsewhere, involving the relics of historic fortunes. The "good Chaffin" was simply an unfaithful steward who had wallowed at his ease for ten or twelve years in the careless prodigality of his lord, and he was preparing to retire, pocketing a handsome percentage of a sum offered by a syndicate of dealers in curios for the treasures preserved intact at Grandchamp by the heroism of the grandmother. Louis de Bressieux, for his part, had got wind of the dealings of the wicked servitor with the second-hand trade, and had succeeded in assuring himself a broker's commission by interesting in the affair the two most famous American dealers in antiquities. It was quite true that such a sale, effected at that moment, might save the rest of the property, and that pretext was the ostensible cloak of a transaction which the two managers of the unclean intrigue were craftily carrying forward, unknown to the alleged beneficiary thereof. This silence convicted them. Such is the commanding prestige of a certain quality in man, that the felonious manager and the profit-sharing friend felt a vague remorse that embarrassed them with respect to each other when the marquis said to them with a cordial, loyal laugh:—
"It's of no use for you to try to debauch me, Chaffin and Bressieux. While I live, nothing in the château shall be touched; when I am dead, I hope that it will be the same," he added, laying his hand on his son's shoulder.