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Updated: May 21, 2025
"Don't you wish to see Lucienne?" he added, addressing himself to M. de Tregars rather more than to the commissary. For all answer, they followed him at once. A cheerless-looking place was Mlle. Lucienne's room, without any furniture but a narrow iron bedstead, a dilapidated bureau, four straw-bottomed chairs, and a small table.
And he felt a cold perspiration starting on his temples when he remembered Mlle. Lucienne's pride, and that honor has her only faith, the safety-plank to which she had desperately clung in the midst of the storms of her life. What if she should leave him, now that the name he bore was disgraced! A rapid and light step on the landing drew him from his gloomy thoughts.
"And that she was brought up through charity?" "By some poor gardeners at Louveciennes: yes, I know all that." Maxence was trembling with joy. It seemed to him that his most dazzling hopes were about to be realized. Seizing the hands of Marius de Tregars, "Ah, you know Lucienne's family!" he exclaimed. But M. de Tregars shook his head.
Lucienne's life from the time that she had left her with the poor gardeners at Louveciennes, without giving either her name or her address, the injury she had received by being run over by Mme. de Thaller's carriage; the long letter she had written from the hospital, begging for assistance; her visit to the house, and her meeting with the Baron de Thaller; the effort to induce her to emigrate to America; her arrest by means of false information, and her escape, thanks to the kind peace-officer; the attempt upon her as she was going home late one night; and, finally, her imprisonment after the Commune, among the petroleuses, and her release through the interference of the same honest friend.
"It is my fault, M. le Marquis; for we were fully notified. I knew so well that Mlle. Lucienne's existence was threatened, I was so fully expecting a new attempt upon her life, that, whenever she went out riding, it was one of my men, wearing a footman's livery, who took his seat by the side of the coachman.
The story spread along the river, as far as Bougival and Rueil. And one morning an officer of gendarmes called at the house; and I don't exactly know what would have happened, if I had not obstinately maintained that I had broken my arm in falling down stairs." What surprised Maxence most was Mlle. Lucienne's simple and natural tone. No emphasis, scarcely an appearance of emotion.
"No, no! you shall not be surrendered," uttered M. de Tregars. Collecting all the energy that the devouring passion which had blasted his existence had left him, the former cashier of the Mutual Credit took one or two steps forward. "Who are you, then?" he asked. "Do you not know me? I am the son of that unfortunate Marquis de Tregars of whom you spoke a moment since. I am Lucienne's brother."
He turned around, and, within two lengths of his cane, saw M. Saint Pavin and M. Costeclar. Maxence hardly knew M. Saint Pavin, whom he had only seen two or three times in the Rue St. Gilles, and execrated M. Costeclar. Still he advanced towards them. Mlle. Lucienne's carriage was now caught in the file; and he was sure of joining it whenever he thought proper.
Ten times, at least, he went out on tiptoe to lean out of the window on the landing, to make sure that there was no light in Mlle. Lucienne's room. At eleven o'clock she had not yet come home; and he was deliberating whether he would not start out in quest of information, when there was a knock at the door. "Come in!" he cried, in a voice choked with emotion. Mlle. Lucienne came in.
But never had he dared to hope for an occasion as propitious as the one he had just seized. And yet, after he had returned to his room, he hardly dared to congratulate himself upon the promptitude of his decision. He knew too well Mlle. Lucienne's excessive pride and sensitive nature. "I should not be surprised if she were angry with me for what I've done," he thought.
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