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The greatest impostors of all ages have ever been their own dupes." At the word impostor, Paul seemed about to speak, but a wave of Tantaine's hand silenced him. "You must cast aside your old skin, and enter that of another. Paul Violaine, the natural son of a woman who kept a small drapery shop at Poitiers, Paul Violaine, the youthful lover of Rose, no longer exists.
He took one of the packets of pasteboard slips form his desk, and shuffling them like a pack of cards, continued, "Your name is Marie Paul Violaine. You were born at Poitiers, in the Rue des Vignes, on the 5th of January, 1843, and are therefore in your twenty-fourth year." "That is quite correct, sir." "You are an illegitimate child?"
His mother, he says, has reason to know that his father is dead, and I believe in the truth of the statement. In this case, what has become of the person who paid Madame Violaine her allowance?" "You are right, quite right; these are the crevices in our armor; but I keep my eyes open, and nothing escapes me." The doctor was growing rather weary, but he still went on courageously.
He worked harder than all his clerks put together, for, after having spent the morning in his counting house over his papers, he received all business clients. On the day after Flavia and Paul Violaine had met at Van Klopen's, M. Martin Rigal was, at about half-past five, closeted with one of his female clients.
There is a mystery in the lives of the Duke and Duchess, of this there is no doubt, but what is this secret? I would lay my life that I have hit upon the correct solution; but I want no suspicions, no probabilities; I want absolute certainties. And now," continued he, "this brings us back to the first question. What do you think of Paul Violaine?"
"Then you think that he will like me?" asked she. She alluded to Paul Violaine, and the banker heaved a deep sigh as he replied, "Is it possible that any human being exists that you cannot please?" "Ah!" mused she, "if it were any one but he, I should have no doubts or misgivings."
Worthy as these projects were, Mascarin contrived to draw considerable profit from them, and was the owner of the house before which, in the noon of the day following the events we have described, Paul Violaine might have been seen standing.
Thus, when Mascarin spoke to him about the father of the lovely Flavia, whose charms had set the susceptible heart of Paul Violaine in a blaze, the arbiter of fashion had replied, "Martin Rigal; yes, I know him; he is a banker." And a banker, indeed, Martin Rigal was, dwelling in a magnificent house in the Rue Montmartre.
Finally there were Maria Blond and Louise Violaine and Lea de Horn, who had all shot up to woman's estate on the pavements of Paris, not to mention Tatan Nene, who had herded cows in Champagne till she was twenty.
"Ah, she's changed; she's changed!" Rose Mignon repeated with a smile of gloomiest dejection. Two more women arrived. These were Tatan Nene and Louise Violaine.
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