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La Varenne became the scene of numerous fetes, but Claire excused herself from attending on the ground that she was not yet well enough to sit up late. Athénais' anticipated pleasure was all lost, since she could not crush her rival with her magnificence. In her jealous rage she began to devote particular attention to Monsieur Derblay.
Once again she fancied herself seated by her cottage door: the sun was setting, and down the small road which led to the house galloped an orderly, a dragoon, covered with dust. "Are you Madeleine Derblay?" he asked. "Yes." He drew from his sack a letter sealed with black.
His choice had been happy, and Madeleine, although poor and untaught, had been a good and loving wife to him. By her thrift and his own hard work his little store quickly increased, and within a few years Derblay reached the goal to which all poor Frenchmen so ardently aspire the position of a landowner.
Poor, guileless Derblay! measuring the words of others by the same simple and honest standard of truth by which he was used to mete his own sayings and promises, he innocently believed in the sterling worth of his debtor's assurance, and starting off to visit him with his son, naïvely asked the man to lend him the fourteen hundred francs he so much needed.
With perfect composure Bligny asked Philippe if he approved of what Madame Derblay had done. In a grave voice, the ironmaster answered, "Monsieur le Duc, whatever Madame Derblay may do, whatever reason she may have for doing it, I consider everything she does as well done." Claire saw two pistols lowered. With a shriek, she bounded forward and clapped her hand on the muzzle of Bligny's pistol!
At last a boy went up and drew the number 109: frantic cheers greeted this check to fortune, and the lucky fellow rushed down with such wild demonstrations of joy that it would have been no great folly to have mistaken him for a criminal just reprieved. A few minutes after the commune of Henri Derblay was called up. Henri himself was sixth on the roll.
The marchioness was grieved more cruelly by this than by the money loss; and the notary was thus emboldened to tell her that a gallant friend of his, M. Derblay, whose father had been kind enough to call Maitre Bachelin his friend, had fallen passionately in love with Mdlle. de Beaulieu, and would be the happiest man in the world if he were even allowed to hope.
"I must introduce you to one another, gentlemen. Monsieur le Duc de Bligny my cousin." Then, turning towards her faithless lover, and defying him, as it were, with her proud gaze, she added, "Duke, Monsieur Derblay, my future husband." III. The Ironmaster's Disappointment
He would have entered the drawing-room, but the baron hindered him, while Maître Bachelin went to ask if he might be received. Claire wore a frightful expression of anger. "Be kind enough" she turned to Bachelin "to ask the duke to go round to the terrace and wait a moment. Don't bring him in till I make you a sign from the window; but, in the meantime, send M. Derblay to me."
In this emergency, François Derblay had thought of a person to whom he had once rendered a service of importance a tradesman who lived in a neighboring town, who was known to be rich, and who had promised his benefactor in the first flush of his gratitude that if ever he could discharge the obligation under which he lay, he would do so at any cost and with the sincerest joy.
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