The terror in which the cardinal was held was so great, his power exercised so arbitrarily, that in this extremity Marguerite was almost friendless. They looked on the father as a doomed man, and condemned his rashness—the daughter they pitied, but shrank from offering her aid. There was one exception.
Returning to the lodging in the Rue St. Denis, she found Monsieur Giraud waiting her arrival. He had heard from the lips of their old domestic, of the maiden’s intention to throw herself at the king’s feet, and anxiously awaited the issue. Gently chiding Mademoiselle for not putting confidence in her father’s friend, he offered to accompany her on the morrow to the abode of his eminence.
The application was successful, and as they returned from the Palais Cardinal, the magnificent abode of the prelate, with an order permitting Mademoiselle ingress and egress, from morn till eve, to and from the Conciergerie, the advocate expressed a conviction that the king had kept his word, for it was an unusual privilege.
Little of importance transpired in the affairs of De Pontis till the day previous to that in which we introduced to the reader our heroine, waiting admission at the portal of the Conciergerie.
In the morn there was a consultation in the prisoner’s chamber, between the advocate, who had obtained an order from the bureau for that purpose, and father and daughter. The worthy Giraud was desponding—the civil suit, he said, thanks to the dilatoriness of the courts! was creeping slowly enough, though much faster than the ordinary routine of practice; but the procureur-général had hastened the penal suit, driving it through the court at such a race-horse speed, that there was great danger of his obtaining a decree of sequestration—utterly ruinous to De Pontis—unless an appeal to cardinal or king, praying for sufficient delay to prepare a defence, were resorted to. It was useless applying to the presidents of the court—they were too much under the lash of Richelieu to do justice to the respondent in the suit.
So far as the Spaniard’s books and accounts, which De Pontis had preserved, testified, there was no appearance of such a debt, nothing tending to confirm directly or indirectly Pedro Olivera’s assumption, but much negative evidence to prove the falsity of his claim.
It was certain, continued the advocate, that a favorite of the cardinal was laying strong claim to the droit d’aubaine, and urging his patron to recover it. He had himself been informed that the party now applying such a pressure on his eminence to effect this unjustifiable, unworthy purpose, had long had an eye on the alien, and marked the property as his own. But the name of the individual intimated in this whisper of scandal, which floated about the precincts of the courts, was unknown to Giraud, nor had he the necessary influence to procure it.
“What matters the name of the minion if they are bent on ruining me?” exclaimed De Pontis.
“Much!” replied his friend, “but listen.”
The advocate then proceeded to relate that among the papers of the deceased he found much correspondence of a peculiar character, some portion of which might even implicate individuals in a charge of treason—other portions related to financial matters, and showing that the Spaniard had been a lender rather than a borrower, and had supplied parties connected with the court with money. Much curious matter there was, even relating to this Pedro Olivera, who, however, figured in a subordinate capacity, certainly very different from what might be expected of one who could lend such a vast sum of money.