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Francoise having been duly informed, it was decided that a commissionaire should go to the Rue Taitbout to inform the young relation whose influence was so disquieting to the four women; still, they hoped that the Auvergnat would be too late in bringing back the person who so certainly held the first place in the widow Crochard's affections.
If the old dealer, instead of going down by the backstairs, had taken the front staircase, he would never have heard Henrietta's agony, and the poor child would have been lost. If Crochard's ball had been a few lines nearer the heart, Daniel would have been killed. And still the old dealer was not quite satisfied.
However, one morning, about the middle of September, Caroline Crochard's roguish face stood out so brightly against the dark background of the room, looking so fresh among the belated flowers and faded leaves that twined round the window-bars, the daily scene was gay with such contrasts of light and shade, of pink and white blending with the light material on which the pretty needlewoman was working, and with the red and brown hues of the chairs, that the stranger gazed very attentively at the effects of this living picture.
"That sum is very far from those fabulous amounts by which you said you had been blinded and carried away." "Pardon me! There was that share in the great fortune." "Ah! You knew very well that Chevassat would never have paid you anything." Crochard's hands twitched nervously. He cried out, "Chevassat cheat me! cochonnere! I would have but no; he knows me; he would never have dared"
This last man he did kill was a traitor like the first. Crochard, I think, reasons like this; to kill an adversary is too easy; it is too brutal; it lacks finesse. Besides, it removes the adversary. And without adversaries, Crochard's life would be of no interest to him. After he had killed his last adversary, he would have to kill himself." "I can't understand a man like that," I said.
While the hackney coach-driver was flogging up his horses at Caroline's urgent request, supported by the promise of a handsome present, the timid old women, who had been Madame Crochard's friends during her later years, had brought a priest into the neat and comfortable second-floor rooms occupied by the old widow.
"My dear Lester," he said, "he knew that the game was up the instant he opened the first packet. Do you suppose he would be deceived? Not by the best reproduction ever made!" And then I remembered the slow flush which had crept into Crochard's cheeks as he opened that first packet! "I didn't expect to deceive him," Godfrey explained. "I just wanted to give him a little surprise.
Brian have gone to work to rob Count Ville-Handry, and to ruin him. I know what they have done with the millions which they report were lost in speculations; and I have the evidence in my hand. Therefore, I can ruin them, without reference to their other crimes. Crochard's affidavit alone suffices to ruin M. de Brevan.
He thought it of great importance that Crochard's evidence should be written down, word for word; and he saw, that, for some little while, the clerk had been unable to follow. "Rest a moment, Crochard," he said. And when the clerk had filled up what was wanting, and the magistrate had looked it over, he said to the prisoner, "Now you can go on, but speak more slowly."
Profound stupor lengthened all of Crochard's features; but he was not the man to give up a game in which his head was at stake, without fighting for it. "Well, there you are mistaken," he said very coolly. "I have been condemned to ten years, that is true, when I was a soldier; but it was for having struck an officer who had punished me unjustly." "You lie.
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