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Updated: June 21, 2025
He was a man about forty years of age, tall, thin, already bald, and wearing his beard trimmed close. "M. Favoral?" he inquired. "My father is not at home," replied Maxence. "It's true, then, what I have just been told?" "What?" "That the police came to arrest him, and he escaped through a window." "It's true," replied Maxence gently. The baker seemed prostrated. "And my money?" he asked.
Any thing appeared to her preferable to the contact of a woman whom she abhorred and despised. She gave her consent; and, twenty days after the first interview, she had become Mme. Favoral. Alas! six weeks had not elapsed, before she knew that she had but exchanged her wretched fate for a more wretched one still.
Rising suddenly to his feet: "By the holy heavens!" he screamed forth, "you are wrong to trifle thus with my will; for, all of you here, I shall crush you as I do this glass." And, with a frenzied gesture, he dashed the glass he held in his hand against the wall, where it broke in a thousand pieces. Trembling like a leaf, Mme. Favoral staggered upon her chair.
"Be it so! let them arrest me; and to-night, for the first time in many years, I shall sleep in peace." There were years, then, that he lived, as it were upon burning coals, trembling at the fear of discovery, and wondering, as he went to sleep each night, whether he would not be awakened by the rude hand of the police tapping him on the shoulder. No one better than Mme. Favoral could affirm it.
Vincent Favoral reappeared upon the threshold of the bedroom. But, if it was a weapon he had gone for, it was not for the one which Marius and Mme. Cadelle supposed. It was a bundle of papers which he held in his hand. Seeing M. de Tregars there, instead of Mme. de Thaller, an exclamation of terror and surprise rose to his lips.
It was done: Gilberte Favoral had just irrevocably disposed of herself. Prosperous or wretched, her destiny henceforth was linked with another. She had set the wheel in motion; and she could no longer hope to control its direction, any more than the will can pretend to alter the course of the ivory ball upon the surface of the roulette-table.
He would have done much more for her, had she wished it; but she would have been compelled to ask, to insist, to beg. "And it's humiliating," she used to say. Sometimes Mme. Favoral scolded her gently, saying that her father would certainly not refuse her one of those pretty toilets which are the ambition and the joy of young girls.
But was it probable, was it even possible, that M. Costeclar could venture upon such a step after Mlle. Gilberte's treatment of him on the previous Saturday evening? "No, a thousand times no!" affirmed Maxence to his mother and sister. "So you may rest easy." Indeed they tried to be, until that very afternoon the sound of rapidly-rolling wheels attracted Mme. Favoral to the window.
"That, also, is a well-known fact." "After dinner he went out to play a game, but it was his only amusement; and at eleven o'clock he was always in bed." "Perfectly correct." "Well, then, sir, where could M. Favoral have found time to abandon himself to the excesses of which you accuse him?" Imperceptibly the commissary of police shrugged his shoulders.
There was nothing in this very reassuring to a mother; but Mme. Favoral knew her daughter too well to hope to conquer her invincible obstinacy. She insisted no more, appeared convinced, but resolved to exercise the utmost vigilance. In vain, however, did she display all the penetration of which she was capable.
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