be so many scoundrels going about,
their pockets filled with other people's money, and from the top of
their carriage laughing at the poor fools they have ruined. Come,
my ten thousand francs, canaille, or I take my pay on your back."

Maxence, enraged, was about to throw himself upon the man, and a
disgusting struggle was about to begin, when Mlle. Gilberte stepped
between them.

"Your threats are as cowardly as your insults, Monsieur Bertan,"
she uttered in a quivering voice. "You have known us long enough
to be aware that we know nothing of our father's business, and that
we have nothing ourselves. All we can do is to give up to our
creditors our very last crumb. Thus it shall be done. And now,
sir, please retire."

There was so much dignity in her sorrow, and so imposing was her
attitude, that the baker stood abashed.

"Ah! if that's the way," he stammered awkwardly; "and since you
meddle with it, mademoiselle--" And he retreated precipitately,
growling at the same time threats and excuses, and slamming the
doors after him hard enough to break the partitions.

"What a disgrace!" murmured Mme. Favoral. Crushed by this last
scene, she was choking; and her children had to carry her to the
open window. She recovered almost at once; but thus, through the
darkness, bleak and cold, she had like a vision of her husband; and,
throwing herself back,

"O great heavens!" she uttered, "where did he go when he left us?
Where is he now? What is he doing? What has become of him?"

Her married life had been for Mme. Favoral but a slow torture. It
was in vain that she would have looked back through her past life
for some of those happy days which leave their luminous track in
life, and towards which the mind turns in the hours of grief.
Vincent Favoral had never been aught but a brutal despot, abusing
the resignation of his victim. And yet, had he died, she would have
wept bitterly over him in all the sincerity of her honest and simple
soul. Habit! Prisoners have been known to shed tears over the
grave of their jailer. Then he was her husband, after all, the
father of her children, the only man who existed for her. For
twenty-six years they had never been separated: they had sat at the
same table: they had slept side by side.

Yes, she would have wept over him. But how much less poignant would
her grief have been than at this moment, when it was complicated by
all the torments of uncertainty, and by the m