The Slaves of Paris Émile Gaboriau (free reads .TXT) 📖

shadow of death has been to you. When I have kissed you, I have fancied that your lips were soiled with the kisses of others, and I could hardly keep my hands from clutching your ivory neck until life was extinct, and failed utterly to decide whether I loved you or hated you the most.”

“Have mercy, Octave! have mercy!” pleaded the unhappy woman.

“You are surprised, I can see,” answered he, with a dark smile; “yet I could give you further food for wonder if I pleased, but I have said enough now.”

A tremor passed over the frame of the Countess. Was her husband acquainted with the existence of the letters? All hinged upon this. He could not have read them, or he would have spoken in very different terms, had he known the mystery contained in them.

“Let me speak,” began she.

“Not a word,” replied her husband.

“On my honor⁠—”

“All is ended; but I must not forget to tell you of one of my youthful follies. You may laugh at it, but that signifies nothing. I actually believed that I could gain your affection. I said to myself that one day you would be moved by my deep passion for you. I was a fool. As if love or affection could ever penetrate the icy barriers that guarded your heart.”

“You have no pity,” wailed she.

He gazed upon her with eyes in which the pent-up anger of twenty years blazed and consumed slowly. “And you, what are you? I drained to the bottom the poisoned cup held out to a deceived husband by an unfaithful wife. Each day widened the breach between us, until at last we sank into this miserable existence which is wearing out my life. I kept no watch on you; I was not made for a jailer. What I wanted was your soul and heart. To imprison the body was easy, but your soul would still have been free to wander in imagination to the meeting-place where your lover expected you. I know not how I had the courage to remain by your side. It was not to save an honor that had already gone, but merely to keep up appearances; for as long as we were nominally together the tongue of scandal was forced to remain silent.”

Again the unhappy woman attempted to protest her innocence, and again the Count paid no heed to her. “I wished too,” resumed he, “to save some portion of our property, for your insatiable extravagance swallowed up all like a bottomless abyss. At last your tradespeople, believing me to be ruined, refused you credit, and this saved me. I had my daughter to think of, and have gathered together a rich dowry for her, and yet⁠—” he hesitated, and ceased speaking for a moment.

“And yet,” repeated Madame de Mussidan.

“I have never kissed her,” he burst forth with a fresh and terrible explosion of wrath, “without feeling a hideous doubt as to whether she was really my child.”

This was more than the Countess could endure.

“Enough,” she cried, “enough! I have been guilty, Octave; but not so guilty as you imagine.”

“Why do you venture to defend yourself?”

“Because it is my duty to guard Sabine.”

“You should have thought of this earlier,” answered the Count with a sneer. “You should have moulded her mind⁠—have taught her what was noble and good, and have perused the unsullied pages of the book of her young heart.”

In the deepest agitation the Countess answered⁠—

“Ah, Octave, why did you not speak of this sooner, if you knew all; but I will now tell you everything.”

By an inconceivable error of judgment the Count corrected her speech. “Spare us both,” said he. “If I have broken through the silence that I have maintained for many a year, it is because I knew that no word you could utter would touch my heart.”

Feeling that all hope had fled, Madame de Mussidan fell backward upon the couch, while Sabine, unable to listen to any more terrible revelations, had crept into her own chamber. The Count was about to leave the drawing-room, when a servant entered, bearing a letter on a silver salver. De Mussidan tore it open; it was from M. de Breulh-Faverlay, asking to be released from his engagement to Sabine de Mussidan. This last stroke was almost too much for the Count’s nerves, for in this act he saw the hand of the man who had come to him with such deadly threats, and terror filled his soul as he thought of the far-stretching arm of him whose bondslave he found himself to be; but before he could collect his thoughts, his daughter’s maid went into the room crying with all her might, “Help, help; my poor mistress is dying!”

XIV Father and Daughter

Van Klopen, the man-milliner, knew Paris and its people thoroughly like all tradesmen who are in the habit of giving large credit. He knew all about the business of his customers, and never forgot an item of information when he received one. 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. The bank was on the ground floor, while his private rooms were in the story above. Though he did not do business in a very large way, yet he was a most respectable man, and his connection was chiefly with the smaller tradespeople, who seem to live a strange kind of hand-to-mouth existence, and who might be happy were it not for the constant reappearance of that grim phantom⁠—bills to be met. Nearly all these persons were in the banker’s hands entirely. Martin Rigal used his power despotically and permitted no arguments, and speedily quelled rebellion on the part of any new customer who ventured to object to his arbitrary