CONCLUSION
Five years later, on an afternoon in the month of November, Comte Paul de Manerville, wrapped in a cloak, was entering, with a bowed head and a mysterious manner, the house of his old friend Monsieur Mathias at Bordeaux.
Too old to continue in business, the worthy notary had sold his practice and was ending his days peacefully in a quiet house to which he had retired. An urgent affair had obliged him to be absent at the moment of his guest's arrival, but his housekeeper, warned of Paul's coming, took him to the room of the late Madame Mathias, who had been dead a year. Fatigued by a rapid journey, Paul slept till evening.
When the old man reached home he went up to his client's room, and watched him sleeping, as a mother watches her child. Josette, the old housekeeper, followed her master and stood before the bed, her hands on her hips.
"It is a year to-day, Josette, since I received my dear wife's last sigh; I little knew then that I should stand here again to see the count half dead.""Poor man! he moans in his sleep," said Josette.
"Sac a papier!" cried the old notary, an innocent oath which was a sign with him of the despair on a man of business before insurmountable difficulties. "At any rate," he thought, "I have saved the title to the Lanstrac estate for him, and that of Ausac, Saint-Froult, and his house, though the usufruct has gone." Mathias counted his fingers. "Five years! Just five years this month, since his old aunt, now dead, that excellent Madame de Maulincour, asked for the hand of that little crocodile of a woman, who has finally ruined him--as I expected."
And the gouty old gentleman, leaning on his cane, went to walk in the little garden till his guest should awake. At nine o'clock supper was served, for Mathias took supper. The old man was not a little astonished, when Paul joined him, to see that his old client's brow was calm and his face serene, though noticeably changed. If at the age of thirty-three the Comte de Manerville seemed to be a man of forty, that change in his appearance was due solely to mental shocks;physically, he was well. He clasped the old man's hand affectionately, and forced him not to rise, saying:--"Dear, kind Maitre Mathias, you, too, have had your troubles.""Mine were natural troubles, Monsieur le comte; but yours--""We will talk of that presently, while we sup.""If I had not a son in the magistracy, and a daughter married," said the good old man, "you would have found in old Mathias, believe me, Monsieur le comte, something better than mere hospitality. Why have you come to Bordeaux at the very moment when posters are on all the walls of the seizure of your farms at Grassol and Guadet, the vineyard of Belle-Rose and the family mansion? I cannot tell you the grief Ifeel at the sight of those placards,--I, who for forty years nursed that property as if it belonged to me; I, who bought it for your mother when I was only third clerk to Monsieur Chesnau, my predecessor, and wrote the deeds myself in my best round hand; I, who have those titles now in my successor's office; I, who have known you since you were so high"; and the old man stopped to put his hand near the ground. "Ah! a man must have been a notary for forty-one years and a half to know the sort of grief I feel to see my name exposed before the face of Israel in those announcements of the seizure and sale of the property. When I pass through the streets and see men reading these horrible yellow posters, I am ashamed, as if my own honor and ruin were concerned. Some fools will stand there and read them aloud expressly to draw other fools about them--and what imbecile remarks they make! As if a man were not master of his own property! Your father ran through two fortunes before he made the one he left you;and you wouldn't be a Manerville if you didn't do likewise. Besides, seizures of real estate have a whole section of the Code to themselves; they are expected and provided for; you are in a position recognized by the law.--If I were not an old man with white hair, Iwould thrash those fools I hear reading aloud in the streets such an abomination as this," added the worthy notary, taking up a paper; "'At the request of Dame Natalie Evangelista, wife of Paul-Francois-Joseph, Comte de Manerville, separated from him as to worldly goods and chattels by the Lower court of the department of the Seine--'""Yes, and now separated in body," said Paul.
"Ah!" exclaimed the old man.
"Oh! against my wife's will," added the count, hastily. "I was forced to deceive her; she did not know that I was leaving her.""You have left her?"
"My passage is taken; I sail for Calcutta on the 'Belle-Amelie.'""Two day's hence!" cried the notary. "Then, Monsieur le comte, we shall never meet again.""You are only seventy-three, my dear Mathias, and you have the gout, the brevet of old age. When I return I shall find you still afoot.
Your good head and heart will be as sound as ever, and you will help me to reconstruct what is now a shaken edifice. I intend to make a noble fortune in seven years. I shall be only forty on my return. All is still possible at that age.""You?" said Mathias, with a gesture of amazement,--you, Monsieur le comte, to undertake commerce! How can you even think of it?""I am no longer Monsieur le comte, dear Mathias. My passage is taken under the name of Camille, one of my mother's baptismal names. I have acquirements which will enable me to make my fortune otherwise than in business. Commerce, at any rate, will be only my final chance. I start with a sum in hand sufficient for the redemption of my future on a large scale.""Where is that money?"
"A friend is to send it to me."
The old man dropped his fork as he heard the word "friend," not in surprise, not scoffingly, but in grief; his look and manner expressed the pain he felt in finding Paul under the influence of a deceitful illusion; his practised eye fathomed a gulf where the count saw nothing but solid ground.