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"Messieurs," said Thuillier, rising, "I am sure you will excuse me for leaving you. If, as Monsieur Barbet thinks, there is some misunderstanding, it ought to be explained at once; I must therefore, with your permission, go to the police court. La Peyrade," he added in a significant tone, "you will not refuse, I presume, to accompany me. And you, my dear publisher, you would do well to come too."
Notwithstanding the favor with which he was greeted, la Peyrade went discreetly to the Thuilliers'. When reproached for this reserve he went oftener, and ended by appearing every Sunday; he was invited to all dinner-parties, and became at last so familiar in the house that whenever he came to see Thuillier about four o'clock he was always requested to take "pot-luck" without ceremony.
"Ha, ha!" said Thuillier, slyly, "so it is a little jealousy, is it, in our mind?" "Jealousy!" retorted la Peyrade. "I don't know if that's the right word, but certainly your sister whose mind is nothing above the ordinary, and to whom I am surprised that a man of your intellectual superiority allows a supremacy in your household which she uses and abuses "
As Peyrade turned into the Rue des Moineaux, he saw Contenson; he outstripped him, went upstairs before him, heard the man's steps on the stairs, and admitted him before the woman had put her nose out of the kitchen door. A bell rung by the opening of a glass door, on the third story where the lapidary lived warned the residents on that and the fourth floors when a visitor was coming to them.
"I have come to propose to Monsieur Thuillier that he purchase the paper itself. Once the proprietor of it he can use it as he pleases." "But in the first place," said la Peyrade, "what is the present condition of the enterprise?
"And this treasure you hold in your hand?" said la Peyrade, in a tone of incredulity. "Better still, I am authorized to offer it to you; in fact, I might say that I am charged to do so." "My friend, you are poking fun at me; unless, indeed, this phoenix has some hideous or prohibitory defect."
Thuillier thanked them effusively for the "honor" they had done him; after which came another long period of waiting, of which we shall not relate the tortures. At one o'clock the assembled contingent comprised five of the invited guests, Barbet and la Peyrade not included.
Thus, in the course of one week la Peyrade became Brigitte's god; and she proved to him by the most naively nefarious arguments that fortune should be seized when it offered itself. "Well, if there is any sin in the business," she said to him in the middle of the garden, "you can confess it." "The devil!" cried Thuillier, "a man owes himself to his relatives, and you are one of us now."
The excuse, both in form and substance, was certainly not discouraging, and la Peyrade looked about him to fulfil the behest to amuse himself.
At this moment Henri, the "male domestic," entered the room to ask if his master would receive Monsieur Cerizet. Thuillier's first impulse was to deny himself to that unwelcome visitor. Then, thinking better of it, he reflected that if la Peyrade suddenly left him in the lurch, Cerizet might possibly prove a precious resource. Consequently, he ordered Henri to show him in.
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