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Updated: May 17, 2025
"Friend Magloire," said Lomaque, winking mildly, "your last remark looks to me like a question in disguise. I put questions constantly to others; I never answer questions myself. You want to know, citizen, what our superintendent's secret motive is for denouncing his wife's brother? Suppose you try and find that out for yourself.
"Quite right of you to excuse him, and quite wrong of him to bully you," said Lomaque, persuasively. "Take my advice," he continued, confidentially, to the hunchback, "and don't trust too implicitly to that slippery memory of yours, after our little drinking bout yesterday. You could not really have read their names at the grate, you know, or of course they would be down on the list.
I say no more, except that I recommend you to keep your head on your shoulders, by troubling it about nothing but the list there in your hand. Stick to that literally, and nobody can blame you. Make a fuss about mysteries that don't concern you, and " Lomaque stopped, and holding his hand edgewise, let it drop significantly over the hunchback's head.
Lomaque started at the whisper, and, opening his note again, hastily wrote under his signature: "I have just heard that Danville has hastened his return to Paris, and may be expected back to-night." Having traced these lines, he closed, sealed, and directed the letter, and gave it to Magloire.
When they were all seated, there was, however, something like a momentary return to the suspense and anxiety of past days in their faces, as Trudaine, looking earnestly at Lomaque, asked, "Do you bring any news from Paris?" "None," he replied; "but excellent news, instead, from Rouen.
With these words he nodded and went out. The brilliant sunlight in the courtyard made him wink faster than ever. Had any of his old enemies been with him, they would have whispered within themselves, "If you mean to come back at all, Citizen Lomaque, it will not be soon after one!"
"You traitor! you coward! can you look at her sitting there helpless, her very life ebbing away already with every minute that passes, and tell me coolly that escape is impossible?" In the frenzy of his grief and despair, he lifted his disengaged hand threateningly while he spoke. Lomaque caught him by the wrist, and drew him toward a window open at the top.
"Pray who are you, sir, who take it on yourself to advise me?" she retorted, haughtily. "I have nothing to say to you, except that I repeat those questions, and that I insist on their being answered." "Who is this man?" asked the general, addressing Trudaine, and pointing to Lomaque.
"Let that man enter, whoever he is!" cried the general. Lomaque passed Madame Danville on the threshold. She trembled as he brushed by her; then, supporting herself by the wall, followed him a few paces into the room. She looked first at her son after that, at Trudaine after that back again at her son. Something in her presence silenced every one.
Monsieur Lomaque, the land-steward, and Monsieur Trudaine, the brother, both glanced searchingly at the bride, as the words passed the bridegroom's lips. She seemed to be frightened and astonished, rather than irritated or hurt. A curious smile puckered up Lomaque's lean face, as he looked demurely down on the ground, and began drilling a fresh hole in the turf with the sharp point of his cane.
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