He laughed in his formidable, ogreish way, and said, still laughing:
“She knew me better, depend upon it. Though, mind you, I had been true to Marie. But a wife who is a nun is a dead wife. I was a widower—the boy motherless.... And He up above us had another score to make off me!... When the boy—Death of my soul!”
He struck one of his crutches on the marble pavement with such force that the stick broke.
“A day came when you looked at me with my own eyes shining out of Marie’s face, and said: ‘I have heard the story. The terms upon which you let my mother resume the Veil were vile!’ Impudent young cockerel! Was it to be supposed that I should try to justify myself in the eyes of a stripling? A man to whom the Emperor used to say: ‘Well, Dunoisse, let us have your opinion on such and such a plan?’ So I laughed at you for a nincompoop—boasted of the pail of milk I had drawn from the Black Cow, saying to myself: ‘All right! He is Marie’s son, that boy! When he is a man grown, I will give him that accursed money, smelling of candles and incense, and he will give it back to the nuns.’ And when time was ripe I transferred the whole lump to your name at Rothschild’s. You made virtuous scruples about taking it, but you never restored it whence it came!... Now you have showed your breed—you have poured it into the lap of a light woman. And you come to me and own that, and ask for more to pitch after it!” He rapped out a huge oath. “Am I not justified in thinking you more my son than Marie’s? Have I not the right to say I am disappointed in you?”
His voice was a mere croak. He went on, with his fierce, bloodshot eyes fixed on vacancy:
“Do you suppose I did not love your mother—have never longed for her—have ever forgotten her? I use her chocolate-set every morning.... Her Indian shawl is the coverlet of my bed. When I have the gout in my eyes I tie a scarf she used to wear over them, like a bandage. There is virtue in things that have been used by a Saint.”
He added:
“For a Saint she is ... and though, as you say I stole my joy in her from Heaven—do you suppose, for one moment, a woman like that is going to let me be damned? She will wear her knees to the bone first; and so I tell you!... Was it not for the sake of my soul she went back to her cell at the Carmel? At the Day of Judgment one voice will be heard that pleads for old Achille Dunoisse.”
One scanty teardrop hung on his inflamed and reddened underlid.
“But Saint or none, she loved me, like twenty women, by Heaven! And if she says she repents of that, again, by Heaven!—she lies!”