they said, had worn him out.
But the state of Dalibard, though prosperous, is not that of the heir
to the dead millionnaire. What mistake is this? The bulk of that wealth
must go to the nearest kin,--so runs the law. But the will is read;
and, for the first time, Olivier Dalibard learns that the dead man had
a son,--a son by a former marriage,--the marriage undeclared, unknown,
amidst the riot of the Revolution; for the wife was the daughter of a
proscrit. The son had been reared at a distance, put to school at Lyons,
and unavowed to the second wife, who had brought an ample dower, and
whom that discovery might have deterred from the altar. Unacknowledged
through life, in death at least the son's rights are proclaimed; and
Olivier Dalibard feels that Jean Bellanger has died in vain! For days
has the pale Provencal been closeted with lawyers; but there is no hope
in litigation. The proofs of the marriage, the birth, the identity, come
out clear and clearer; and the beardless schoolboy at Lyons reaps all
the profit of those nameless schemes and that mysterious death. Olivier
Dalibard desires the friendship, the intimacy of the heir; but the heir
is consigned to the guardianship of a merchant at Lyons, near of kin to
his mother, and the guardian responds but coldly to Olivier's letters.
Suddenly the defeated aspirant seems reconciled to his loss. The
widow Bellanger has her own separate fortune, and it is large beyond
expectation. In addition to the wealth she brought the deceased, his
affection had led him to invest vast sums in her name. The widow then
is rich,--rich as the heir himself. She is still fair. Poor woman, she
needs consolation! But, meanwhile, the nights of Olivier Dalibard are
disturbed and broken. His eye in the daytime is haggard and anxious; he
is seldom seen on foot in the streets. Fear is his companion by day, and
sits at night on his pillow. The Chouan, Pierre Guillot, who looked to
George Cadoudal as a god, knows that George Cadoudal has been betrayed,
and suspects Olivier Dalibard; and the Chouan has an arm of iron, and a
heart steeled against all mercy. Oh, how the pale scholar thirsted
for that Chouan's blood! With what relentless pertinacity, with what
ingenious research, he had set all the hounds of the police upon the
track of that single man! How notably he had failed! An avenger lived;
and Olivier Dalibard started at his own shadow on the wall. But he did
not the less continue to plot and to i