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Suffering, sickness, had perhaps delivered her from that man. Perhaps he was half mad, and Charenton might yet do her justice. She had not chosen to take either Delbecq or the police into her confidence, for fear of putting herself in their power, or of hastening the catastrophe.
My position is intolerable..." "Why, what is the matter?" asked the good man. "Nothing, nothing!" she replied. She rose, left the Colonel, and went down to speak privately to her maid, whom she sent off to Paris, impressing on her that she was herself to deliver to Delbecq the letter just written, and to bring it back to the writer as soon as he had read it.
The Colonel, who recovered the elasticity of youth to leap the haha, in the twinkling of an eye was standing in front of Delbecq, on whom he bestowed the two finest slaps that ever a scoundrel's cheeks received. "And you may add that old horses can kick!" said he. His rage spent, the Colonel no longer felt vigorous enough to leap the ditch. He had seen the truth in all its nakedness.
"Madame la Comtesse Ferraud desires me to inform you that your client took complete advantage of your confidence, and that the individual calling himself Comte Chabert has acknowledged that he came forward under false pretences. "Yours, etc., DELBECQ." "One comes across people who are, on my honor, too stupid by half," cried Derville. "They don't deserve to be Christians!
"Madame," said he, a little sharply, for the light tone in which she spoke jarred on him. "I have come to speak with you on a very serious matter." "I am so grieved, M. le Comte is away " "I, madame, am delighted. It would be grievous if he could be present at our interview. Besides, I am informed through M. Delbecq that you like to manage your own business without troubling the Count."
"Indeed, monsieur," said Delbecq, "I should advise you not to sign in haste. In your place I would get at least thirty thousand francs a year out of the bargain. Madame would pay them." After annihilating this scoundrel emeritus by the lightning look of an honest man insulted, the Colonel rushed off, carried away by a thousand contrary emotions.
Nor did the old man notice that his wife was in the room over him. "Well, Monsieur Delbecq, has he signed?" the Countess asked her secretary, whom she saw alone on the road beyond the hedge of a haha. "No, madame. I do not even know what has become of our man. The old horse reared." "Then we shall be obliged to put him into Charenton," said she, "since we have got him."
So on the following morning Colonel Chabert went with the erewhile attorney to Saint-Leu-Taverny, where Delbecq had caused the notary to draw up an affidavit in such terms that, after hearing it read, the Colonel started up and walked out of the office. "Turf and thunder! What a fool you must think me! Why, I should make myself out a swindler!" he exclaimed.
"I declare to you that I will have nothing to do with this affair. I ought not." Delbecq had arrived some days before, and in obedience to the Countess' verbal instructions, the intendant had succeeded in gaining the old soldier's confidence.
Wholly occupied as he was by the anxieties of consuming ambition, he had attached to himself, as secretary, a ruined attorney named Delbecq, a more than clever man, versed in all the resources of the law, to whom he left the conduct of his private affairs. This shrewd practitioner had so well understood his position with the Count as to be honest in his own interest.
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