coming to dinner as I requested?"

"Monseigneur, he is ill."

"Are you sure?"

"I have just come from there."

"Monsieur," said the count, with a stern air which was really terrible,
"what would you do with a man whom you trusted, if, after seeing you
dress wounds which you desired to keep secret from all the world,
he should reveal your misfortunes and laugh at your malady with a
strumpet?"

"I would thrash him for it."

"And if you discovered that he was also betraying your confidence and
robbing you?"

"I should endeavor to detect him, and send him to the galleys."

"Monsieur Moreau, listen to me. You have undoubtedly spoken of my
infirmities to Madame Clapart; you have laughed at her house, and with
her, over my attachment to the Comtesse de Serizy; for her son, little
Husson, told a number of circumstances relating to my medical treatment,
to travellers by a public conveyance in my presence, and Heaven knows in
what language! He dared to calumniate my wife. Besides this, I learned
from the lips of Pere Leger himself, who was in the coach, of the plan
laid by the notary at Beaumont and by you and by himself in relation to
Les Moulineaux. If you have been, as you say, to Monsieur Margueron, it
was to tell him to feign illness. He is so little ill that he is coming
here to dinner this evening. Now, monsieur, I could pardon you having
made two hundred and fifty thousand francs out of your situation in
seventeen years,--I can understand that. You might each time have asked
me for what you took, and I would have given it to you; but let that
pass. You have been, notwithstanding this disloyalty, better than
others, as I believe. But that you, who knew my toil for our country,
for France, you have seen me giving night after night to the Emperor's
service, and working eighteen hours of each twenty-four for months
together, you who knew my love for Madame de Serizy,--that you should
have gossiped about me before a boy! holding up my secrets and my
affections to the ridicule of a Madame Husson!--"

"Monseigneur!"

"It is unpardonable. To injure a man's interest, why, that is nothing;
but to stab his heart!--Oh! you do not know what you have done!"

The count put his head in his hands and was silent for some moments.

"I leave you what you have gained," he said after a time, "and I shall
forget you. For my sake, for my dignity, and for your honor, we will
part decently; for I cannot but remember even now what yo