A harsh sound came from his throat: he swallowed and blinked and went on talking:
“Listen to me, you who are more my son than Marie’s, though you tell me that you hold her memory sacred, and denounce me as the plunderer of Christ? When her youngest child, your sister, died, Marie saw in that the beginning of Heaven’s vengeance: the price that must be paid, the punishment that must be borne. And she prayed and wept—what tears!—and gave me no peace until she had wrung from me my promise that she should go back to her Convent if the Chapter would receive her.... I am an old tactician—I gave the pledge in the full belief that never would they open their doors.... And when she brought me the Prioress’s letter, it was as though a spent cannon-ball had hit me on the headpiece. Then I had an idea. The dowry of three hundred thousand silver thalers. What the Church had once got her claws on I knew she would never let go.... So I blustered and raved and swore to Marie.... ‘The dowry, or I keep my wife!’”
His pendulous cheeks and chin shook as he wagged his head at Hector.
“Do you suppose I wanted the accursed dross? No! by the thunder of Heaven! I was greedy of something else. The woman—my wife—who lay in my arms and sighed, and kissed me, and wept....”
His voice cracked. He said:
“Do you think she did not know the truth? You shall never make me believe she did not. Even while I bragged and blustered about a lawsuit—even when my notary wrote a letter, I had fears and quakings of the heart. When no answer came from the Mother Prioress, I rubbed my hands and congratulated myself. Thrice-accursed fool who thought to outwit God——”
He rummaged for his snuffbox, tapped it wrong way up, opened it in this position, spilt all its store of snuff, swore, and pitched it across the hall.
“He is the King of strategists—the Marshal of Napoleon’s Grand Army, compared with Him, was a blind beetle. The Prioress’s answer came: ‘We concede you this money,’ said the letter, ‘as the price of a soul.’ Enclosed was a draft on the Bank of Bavaria. That night Marie left me. Without even a kiss of farewell, she who had been my wife for nine years, and borne me a boy and a girl.... Imagine if the money did not weigh on me like the dead horse I lay under all through the night of Austerlitz, with the bone of my broken leg sticking through my boot! Conceive if it did not smell to me of beeswax candles, brown serge habits, incense and pauper’s pallets! Pshaw! Peugh! Piff!”
He blew his old nose and swore a little, and then went on:
“I did not send back the three hundred thousand thalers. True! they were so much dirt in my eyes.... But cash is cash, and to part with it would not have brought my Marie back again. I let the stuff lie and breed at my bank. I would have raked the kennels for crusts rather than touch it. Not that I have ever needed money. The old brigand of the Grand Army has known how to keep what he had gained. Though I have lived up to my income....drank, gambled, amused myself with women! What matter the women? Did Marie suppose I should spend my time in stringing daisy-chains when she had gone away?”