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Maitre Le Merquier, above his spectacles, looked at the curtain with a disturbed air. Evidently the conversation was taking an unexpected turn. "I do not enter on the main question," said the Nabob. "Your report, I am assured, is impartial and loyal, such as your conscience has dictated to you.
I ask nothing but that, my dear colleague, absolute reticence on this subject; for the rest I rely upon your justice and your loyalty." He rose, prepared to go, and Le Merquier did not stir, still questioning the green hanging in front of him, as if seeking there an inspiration for his reply. At last, "It shall be as you wish, my dear colleague," he said.
At last it came his turn to enter the sanctum, and if any shadow of doubt concerning Maître Le Merquier remained in his mind, that doubt vanished when he saw that high-studded office, simple and severe in appearance, although somewhat more decorated than the waiting-room of which the advocate made a framework for his rigid principles and his long, thin, stooping, narrow-shouldered person, eternally squeezed into a black coat too short in the sleeves, from which protruded two flat, square, black hands, two clubs of India ink covered with swollen veins like hieroglyphics.
Madame Hemerlingue had long since abandoned all Mohammedan practices, when Maître Le Merquier, the intimate friend of the family and her cicerone in Paris, pointed out that a formal conversion of the baroness would open to her the doors of that portion of Parisian society which seems to have become more and more difficult of access, in proportion as the society all around it has become more democratic.
I know the confidence with which you are honoured by your colleagues, M. Le Merquier, and that, when I shall have convinced you, your word will be enough without forcing me to lay bare my distress to them all. You know the accusation the most terrible, the most ignoble. There are so many people who might be deceived by it. My enemies have given names, dates, addresses.
He did not surrender even then, however, but left Le Merquier to put his words forward, one in front of another, feeling the ground for his stumbling advance. He had heard much of his honorable colleague's gallery. Would it be presumptuous for him to ask the favor of being admitted to ?
We shall come on Saturday. But you will take me to see Le Merquier."
The sacrifice of her religion soon followed that of her costume. Mme. Hemerlingue had long abandoned the practices of Mohammedan religion, when M. le Merquier, their friend and mentor in Paris, showed them that the baroness's public conversion would open to her the doors of that section of the Parisian world whose access became more and more difficult as society became more democratic.
The first days he went and came in the corridors, the library, the dining-room, the lecture-hall, like the rest, delighted to roam through all the corners of that majestic labyrinth; but he was unknown to most of his associates, unacknowledged by a few members of the Rue Royale Club, who avoided him, detested by all the clerical party of which Le Merquier was the head.
I know the confidence which your colleagues repose in you, Monsieur Le Merquier, and that, when I have convinced you, your word will be sufficient and I shall not be obliged to parade my distress before the full committee. You know the charge. I refer to the most horrible, the most shameful one. There are so many that one might make a mistake among them.
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