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Updated: June 6, 2025
He saw women seated on the staircase; a horrible display of pallor and suffering of many kinds. Dutocq was almost asphyxiated when he opened the door of the room in which already sixty persons had left their odors. "Your number? your number?" cried several voices. "Hold your jaw!" cried a gruff voice from the street, "that's the pen of the judge." Profound silence followed.
"Faith! no, my dear fellow," replied Dutocq, "I don't carry them about with me; besides, they are in Cerizet's hands." "Well," said the barrister, rising, "whenever you come to my house I'll pay you on the nail, as Cerizet can tell you." "What! are you going to leave us without your coffee?" said Cerizet, amazed to the last degree. "Yes; I have an arbitration case at eight o'clock.
To another such festival on the day after election!" "What is that little bottle you have there?" said Dutocq to Mademoiselle Thuillier. "That," she said, "is one of my three bottles of Madame Amphoux' liqueur; the second is for the day of Celeste's marriage; the third for the day on which her first child is baptized." "My sister is losing her head," remarked Thuillier to Colleville.
The news told about in the offices the night before, just as the clerks were dispersing, agitated all minds, and for the first half-hour after arrival in the morning they stood around the stoves and talked it over. But earlier than that, Dutocq, as we have seen, had rushed to des Lupeaulx on receiving his note, and found him dressing.
"Here you are, then," continued du Portail, "at twenty-eight years of age, without a penny, virtually without a profession; with antecedents that are very middling; with associates like Monsieur Dutocq and the courageous Cerizet; owing to Mademoiselle Thuillier ten thousand francs, and to Madame Lambert twenty-five thousand, which you are no doubt extremely desirous to return to her; and finally, this marriage, your last hope, your sheet-anchor, has just become an utter impossibility.
For the last six months Dutocq had taken to visiting Mademoiselle Godard from time to time, with certain views of his own, hoping to discover in her establishment some female treasure. Thus Baudoyer had a pair of henchmen in Dutocq and Godard. Monsieur Saillard, too innocent to judge rightly of Dutocq, was in the habit of paying him frequent little visits at the office.
Dutocq himself lived in a pension in the rue de Beaune, and spent his evenings in the Palais-Royal, sometimes going to the theatre, thanks to du Bruel, who gave him an author's ticket about once a week. And now, a word on du Bruel.
"What you are declaiming there is all very clever," he said, carelessly, "but the thing that proves to me our defeat is the fact that you are not on the terms with Mademoiselle Thuillier you would have us believe you are. She is slipping through your fingers; and I don't think that marriage is anything like as certain as Dutocq and I have been fancying it was."
"Unfortunately, engaged at the time in a rush of important affairs, which you shall hear of later, I could not immediately follow up the benevolent interest I felt in you for your uncle's sake; this explains why I left you in the straw of a garret, where you came, like a medlar, to that maturity of ruin which brought you under the hand of a Dutocq and a Cerizet."
"If you don't want to make powerful enemies I advise you to keep this paper a profound secret; it is a work of the utmost importance and already well known to me." So saying, des Lupeaulx dismissed Dutocq by one of those glances that are more expressive than words.
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