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THE TRAP
The door of the garret had just opened abruptly, and allowed
a view of three men clad in blue linen blouses, and masked with
masks of black paper.
The first was thin, and had a long, iron-tipped cudgel; the
second, who was a sort of colossus, carried, by the middle of
the handle, with the blade downward, a butcher's pole-axe for
slaughtering cattle.
The third, a man with thick-set shoulders, not so slender
as the first, held in his hand an enormous key stolen from the
door of some prison.
It appeared that the arrival of these men was what Jondrette
had been waiting for.
A rapid dialogue ensued between him and the man with the cudgel,
the thin one.
"Is everything ready?" said Jondrette.
"Yes," replied the thin man.
"Where is Montparnasse?"
"The young principal actor stopped to chat with your
girl."
"Which?"
"The eldest."
"Is there a carriage at the door?"
"Yes."
"Is the team harnessed?"
"Yes."
"With two good horses?"
"Excellent."
"Is it waiting where I ordered?"
"Yes."
"Good," said Jondrette.
M. Leblanc was very pale.
He was scrutinizing everything around him in the den, like
a man who understands what he has fallen into, and his head, directed
in turn toward all the heads which surrounded him, moved on his
neck with an astonished and attentive slowness, but there was
nothing in his air which resembled fear.
He had improvised an intrenchment out of the table; and the
man, who but an instant previously, had borne merely the appearance
of a kindly old man, had suddenly become a sort of athlete, and
placed his robust fist on the back of his chair, with a formidable
and surprising gesture.
This old man, who was so firm and so brave in the presence
of such a danger, seemed to possess one of those natures which
are as courageous as they are kind, both easily and simply. The
father of a woman whom we love is never a stranger to us. Marius
felt proud of that unknown man.
Three of the men, of whom Jondrette had said:
"They are chimney-builders," had armed themselves
from the pile of old iron, one with a heavy pair of shears, the
second with weighing-tongs, the third with a hammer, and had placed
themselves across the entrance without uttering a syllable.
The old man had remained on the bed, and had merely opened
his eyes.
The Jondrette woman had seated herself beside him.
Marius decided that in a few seconds more the moment for intervention
would arrive, and he raised his right hand towards the ceiling,
in the direction of the corridor, in readiness to discharge his
pistol.
Jondrette having terminated his colloquy with the man with
the cudgel, turned once more to M. Leblanc, and repeated his question,
accompanying it with that low, repressed, and terrible laugh which
was peculiar to him:--
"So you do not recognize me?"
M. Leblanc looked him full in the face, and replied:--
"No."
Then Jondrette advanced to the table.
He leaned across the candle, crossing his arms, putting his
angular and ferocious jaw close to M. Leblanc's calm face, and
advancing as far as possible without forcing M. Leblanc to retreat,
and, in this posture of a wild beast who is about to bite, he
exclaimed:--
"My name is not Fabantou, my name is not Jondrette, my
name is Thenardier.
I am the inn-keeper of Montfermeil! Do you understand?
Thenardier!
Now do you know me?"
An almost imperceptible flush crossed M. Leblanc's brow, and
he replied with a voice which neither trembled nor rose above
its ordinary level, with his accustomed placidity:--
"No more than before."
Marius did not hear this reply.
Any one who had seen him at that moment through the darkness
would have perceived that he was haggard, stupid, thunder-struck.
At the moment when Jondrette said: "My name is Thenardier,"
Marius had trembled in every limb, and had leaned against the
wall, as though he felt the cold of a steel blade through his
heart.
Then his right arm, all ready to discharge the signal shot,
dropped slowly, and at the moment when Jondrette repeated, "Thenardier,
do you understand?" Marius's faltering fingers had come near
letting the pistol fall. Jondrette, by revealing his identity,
had not moved M. Leblanc, but he had quite upset Marius.
That name of Thenardier, with which M. Leblanc did not seem
to be acquainted, Marius knew well. Let the reader recall what
that name meant to him!
That name he had worn on his heart, inscribed in his father's
testament! He bore it at the bottom of his mind, in the depths
of his memory, in that sacred injunction:
"A certain Thenardier saved my life. If my son encounters
him, he will do him all the good that lies in his power."
That name, it will be remembered, was one of the pieties of
his soul; he mingled it with the name of his father in his worship.
What!
This man was that Thenardier, that inn-keeper of Montfermeil
whom he had so long and so vainly sought!
He had found him at last, and how?
His father's saviour was a ruffian! That man, to whose service
Marius was burning to devote himself, was a monster!
That liberator of Colonel Pontmercy was on the point of committing
a crime whose scope Marius did not, as yet, clearly comprehend,
but which resembled an assassination! And against whom, great
God! what a fatality!
What a bitter mockery of fate!
His father had commanded him from the depths of his coffin
to do all the good in his power to this Thenardier, and for four
years Marius had cherished no other thought than to acquit this
debt of his father's, and at the moment when he was on the eve
of having a brigand seized in the very act of crime by justice,
destiny cried to him:
"This is Thenardier!"
He could at last repay this man for his father's life, saved
amid a hail-storm of grape-shot on the heroic field of Waterloo,
and repay it with the scaffold! He had sworn to himself that if
ever he found that Thenardier, he would address him only by throwing
himself at his feet; and now he actually had found him, but it
was only to deliver him over to the executioner!
His father said to him:
"Succor Thenardier!" And he replied to that adored
and sainted voice by crushing Thenardier! He was about to offer
to his father in his grave the spectacle of that man who had torn
him from death at the peril of his own life, executed on the Place
Saint-Jacques through the means of his son, of that Marius to
whom he had entrusted that man by his will! And what a mockery
to have so long worn on his breast his father's last commands,
written in his own hand, only to act in so horribly contrary a
sense!
But, on the other hand, now look on that trap and not prevent
it!
Condemn the victim and to spare the assassin! Could one be
held to any gratitude towards so miserable a wretch? All the ideas
which Marius had cherished for the last four years were pierced
through and through, as it were, by this unforeseen blow.
He shuddered.
Everything depended on him.
Unknown to themselves, he held in his hand all those beings
who were moving about there before his eyes.
If he fired his pistol, M. Leblanc was saved, and Thenardier
lost; if he did not fire, M. Leblanc would be sacrificed, and,
who knows?
Thenardier would escape.
Should he dash down the one or allow the other to fall?
Remorse awaited him in either case.
What was he to do?
What should he choose?
Be false to the most imperious souvenirs, to all those solemn
vows to himself, to the most sacred duty, to the most venerated
text!
Should he ignore his father's testament, or allow the perpetration
of a crime! On the one hand, it seemed to him that he heard "his
Ursule" supplicating for her father and on the other, the
colonel commending Thenardier to his care.
He felt that he was going mad.
His knees gave way beneath him.
And he had not even the time for deliberation, so great was
the fury with which the scene before his eyes was hastening to
its catastrophe.
It was like a whirlwind of which he had thought himself the
master, and which was now sweeping him away. He was on the verge
of swooning.
In the meantime, Thenardier, whom we shall henceforth call
by no other name, was pacing up and down in front of the table
in a sort of frenzy and wild triumph.
He seized the candle in his fist, and set it on the chimney-piece
with so violent a bang that the wick came near being extinguished,
and the tallow bespattered the wall.
Then he turned to M. Leblanc with a horrible look, and spit
out these words:--
"Done for!
Smoked brown!
Cooked!
Spitchcocked!"
And again he began to march back and forth, in full eruption.
"Ah!" he cried, "so I've found you again at
last, Mister philanthropist! Mister threadbare millionnaire!
Mister giver of dolls! you old ninny! Ah! so you don't recognize
me!
No, it wasn't you who came to Montfermeil, to my inn, eight
years ago, on Christmas eve, 1823! It wasn't you who carried off
that Fantine's child from me! The Lark!
It wasn't you who had a yellow great-coat! No! Nor a package
of duds in your hand, as you had this morning here! Say, wife,
it seems to be his mania to carry packets of woollen stockings
into houses!
Old charity monger, get out with you! Are you a hosier, Mister
millionnaire?
You give away your stock in trade to the poor, holy man!
What bosh! merry Andrew! Ah! and you don't recognize me?
Well, I recognize you, that I do! I recognized you the very
moment you poked your snout in here. Ah! you'll find out presently,
that it isn't all roses to thrust yourself in that fashion into
people's houses, under the pretext that they are taverns, in wretched
clothes, with the air of a poor man, to whom one would give a
sou, to deceive persons, to play the generous, to take away their
means of livelihood, and to make threats in the woods, and you
can't call things quits because afterwards, when people are ruined,
you bring a coat that is too large, and two miserable hospital
blankets, you old blackguard, you child-stealer!"
He paused, and seemed to be talking to himself for a moment.
One would have said that his wrath had fallen into some hole,
like the Rhone; then, as though he were concluding aloud the things
which he had been saying to himself in a whisper, he smote the
table with his fist, and shouted:--
"And with his goody-goody air!"
And, apostrophizing M. Leblanc:--
"Parbleu!
You made game of me in the past!
You are the cause of all my misfortunes!
For fifteen hundred francs you got a girl whom I had, and
who certainly belonged to rich people, and who had already brought
in a great deal of money, and from whom I might have extracted
enough to live on all my life!
A girl who would have made up to me for everything that I
lost in that vile cook-shop, where there was nothing but one continual
row, and where, like a fool, I ate up my last farthing!
Oh!
I wish all the wine folks drank in my house had been poison
to those who drank it! Well, never mind!
Say, now!
You must have thought me ridiculous when you went off with
the Lark!
You had your cudgel in the forest. You were the stronger.
Revenge.
I'm the one to hold the trumps to-day! You're in a sorry case,
my good fellow!
Oh, but I can laugh!
Really, I laugh!
Didn't he fall into the trap! I told him that I was an actor,
that my name was Fabantou, that I had played comedy with Mamselle
Mars, with Mamselle Muche, that my landlord insisted on being
paid tomorrow, the 4th of February, and he didn't even notice
that the 8th of January, and not the 4th of February is the time
when the quarter runs out!
Absurd idiot! And the four miserable Philippes which he has
brought me!
Scoundrel! He hadn't the heart even to go as high as a hundred
francs!
And how he swallowed my platitudes!
That did amuse me.
I said to myself: `Blockhead! Come, I've got you!
I lick your paws this morning, but I'll gnaw your heart this
evening!'"
Thenardier paused.
He was out of breath.
His little, narrow chest panted like a forge bellows.
His eyes were full of the ignoble happiness of a feeble, cruel,
and cowardly creature, which finds that it can, at last, harass
what it has feared, and insult what it has flattered, the joy
of a dwarf who should be able to set his heel on the head of Goliath,
the joy of a jackal which is beginning to rend a sick bull, so
nearly dead that he can no longer defend himself, but sufficiently
alive to suffer still.
M. Leblanc did not interrupt him, but said to him when he
paused:--
"I do not know what you mean to say.
You are mistaken in me.
I am a very poor man, and anything but a millionnaire.
I do not know you. You are mistaking me for some other person."
"Ah!" roared Thenardier hoarsely, "a pretty
lie!
You stick to that pleasantry, do you!
You're floundering, my old buck! Ah!
You don't remember!
You don't see who I am?"
"Excuse me, sir," said M. Leblanc with a politeness
of accent, which at that moment seemed peculiarly strange and
powerful, "I see that you are a villain!"
Who has not remarked the fact that odious creatures possess
a susceptibility of their own, that monsters are ticklish!
At this word "villain," the female Thenardier sprang
from the bed, Thenardier grasped his chair as though he were about
to crush it in his hands. "Don't you stir!" he shouted
to his wife; and, turning to M. Leblanc:--
"Villain!
Yes, I know that you call us that, you rich gentlemen! Stop!
it's true that I became bankrupt, that I am in hiding, that I
have no bread, that I have not a single sou, that I am a villain!
It's three days since I have had anything to eat, so I'm a villain!
Ah! you folks warm your feet, you have Sakoski boots, you have
wadded great-coats, like archbishops, you lodge on the first floor
in houses that have porters, you eat truffles, you eat asparagus
at forty francs the bunch in the month of January, and green peas,
you gorge yourselves, and when you want to know whether it is
cold, you look in the papers to see what the engineer Chevalier's
thermometer says about it.
We, it is we who are thermometers. We don't need to go out
and look on the quay at the corner of the Tour de l'Horologe,
to find out the number of degrees of cold; we feel our blood congealing
in our veins, and the ice forming round our hearts, and we say:
`There is no God!'
And you come to our caverns, yes our caverns, for the purpose
of calling us villains! But we'll devour you!
But we'll devour you, poor little things! Just see here, Mister
millionnaire:
I have been a solid man, I have held a license, I have been
an elector, I am a bourgeois, that I am!
And it's quite possible that you are not!"
Here Thenardier took a step towards the men who stood near
the door, and added with a shudder:--
"When I think that he has dared to come here and talk
to me like a cobbler!"
Then addressing M. Leblanc with a fresh outburst of frenzy:--
"And listen to this also, Mister philanthropist!
I'm not a suspicious character, not a bit of it!
I'm not a man whose name nobody knows, and who comes and abducts
children from houses! I'm an old French soldier, I ought to have
been decorated! I was at Waterloo, so I was!
And in the battle I saved a general called the Comte of I
don't know what.
He told me his name, but his beastly voice was so weak that
I didn't hear.
All I caught was Merci [thanks]. I'd rather have had his name
than his thanks. That would have helped me to find him again.
The picture that you see here, and which was painted by David
at Bruqueselles,--do you know what it represents?
It represents me.
David wished to immortalize that feat of prowess.
I have that general on my back, and I am carrying him through
the grape-shot. There's the history of it! That general never
did a single thing for me; he was no better than the rest!
But none the less, I saved his life at the risk of my own,
and I have the certificate of the fact in my pocket! I am a soldier
of Waterloo, by all the furies!
And now that I have had the goodness to tell you all this,
let's have an end of it. I want money, I want a deal of money,
I must have an enormous lot of money, or I'll exterminate you,
by the thunder of the good God!"
Marius had regained some measure of control over his anguish,
and was listening.
The last possibility of doubt had just vanished. It certainly
was the Thenardier of the will.
Marius shuddered at that reproach of ingratitude directed
against his father, and which he was on the point of so fatally
justifying.
His perplexity was redoubled.
Moreover, there was in all these words of Thenardier, in his
accent, in his gesture, in his glance which darted flames at every
word, there was, in this explosion of an evil nature disclosing
everything, in that mixture of braggadocio and abjectness, of
pride and pettiness, of rage and folly, in that chaos of real
griefs and false sentiments, in that immodesty of a malicious
man tasting the voluptuous delights of violence, in that shameless
nudity of a repulsive soul, in that conflagration of all sufferings
combined with all hatreds, something which was as hideous as evil,
and as heart-rending as the truth.
The picture of the master, the painting by David which he
had proposed that M. Leblanc should purchase, was nothing else,
as the reader has divined, than the sign of his tavern painted,
as it will be remembered, by himself, the only relic which he
had preserved from his shipwreck at Montfermeil.
As he had ceased to intercept Marius' visual ray, Marius could
examine this thing, and in the daub, he actually did recognize
a battle, a background of smoke, and a man carrying another man.
It was the group composed of Pontmercy and Thenardier; the sergeant
the rescuer, the colonel rescued.
Marius was like a drunken man; this picture restored his father
to life in some sort; it was no longer the signboard of the wine-shop
at Montfermeil, it was a resurrection; a tomb had yawned, a phantom
had risen there.
Marius heard his heart beating in his temples, he had the
cannon of Waterloo in his ears, his bleeding father, vaguely depicted
on that sinister panel terrified him, and it seemed to him that
the misshapen spectre was gazing intently at him.
When Thenardier had recovered his breath, he turned his bloodshot
eyes on M. Leblanc, and said to him in a low, curt voice:--
"What have you to say before we put the handcuffs on
you?"
M. Leblanc held his peace.
In the midst of this silence, a cracked voice launched this
lugubrious sarcasm from the corridor:--
"If there's any wood to be split, I'm there!"
It was the man with the axe, who was growing merry.
At the same moment, an enormous, bristling, and clayey face
made its appearance at the door, with a hideous laugh which exhibited
not teeth, but fangs.
It was the face of the man with the butcher's axe.
"Why have you taken off your mask?" cried Thenardier
in a rage.
"For fun," retorted the man.
For the last few minutes M. Leblanc had appeared to be watching
and following all the movements of Thenardier, who, blinded and
dazzled by his own rage, was stalking to and fro in the den with
full confidence that the door was guarded, and of holding an unarmed
man fast, he being armed himself, of being nine against one, supposing
that the female Thenardier counted for but one man.
During his address to the man with the pole-axe, he had turned
his back to M. Leblanc.
M. Leblanc seized this moment, overturned the chair with his
foot and the table with his fist, and with one bound, with prodigious
agility, before Thenardier had time to turn round, he had reached
the window. To open it, to scale the frame, to bestride it, was
the work of a second only.
He was half out when six robust fists seized him and dragged
him back energetically into the hovel.
These were the three "chimney-builders," who had
flung themselves upon him. At the same time the Thenardier woman
had wound her hands in his hair.
At the trampling which ensued, the other ruffians rushed up
from the corridor.
The old man on the bed, who seemed under the influence of
wine, descended from the pallet and came reeling up, with a stone-breaker's
hammer in his hand.
One of the "chimney-builders," whose smirched face
was lighted up by the candle, and in whom Marius recognized, in
spite of his daubing, Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille,
lifted above M. Leblanc's head a sort of bludgeon made of two
balls of lead, at the two ends of a bar of iron.
Marius could not resist this sight.
"My father," he thought, "forgive me!"
And his finger sought the trigger of his pistol.
The shot was on the point of being discharged when Thenardier's
voice shouted:--
"Don't harm him!"
This desperate attempt of the victim, far from exasperating
Thenardier, had calmed him.
There existed in him two men, the ferocious man and the adroit
man.
Up to that moment, in the excess of his triumph in the presence
of the prey which had been brought down, and which did not stir,
the ferocious man had prevailed; when the victim struggled and
tried to resist, the adroit man reappeared and took the upper
hand.
"Don't hurt him!" he repeated, and without suspecting
it, his first success was to arrest the pistol in the act of being
discharged, and to paralyze Marius, in whose opinion the urgency
of the case disappeared, and who, in the face of this new phase,
saw no inconvenience in waiting a while longer.
Who knows whether some chance would not arise which would
deliver him from the horrible alternative of allowing Ursule's
father to perish, or of destroying the colonel's saviour?
A herculean struggle had begun.
With one blow full in the chest, M. Leblanc had sent the old
man tumbling, rolling in the middle of the room, then with two
backward sweeps of his hand he had overthrown two more assailants,
and he held one under each of his knees; the wretches were rattling
in the throat beneath this pressure as under a granite millstone;
but the other four had seized the formidable old man by both arms
and the back of his neck, and were holding him doubled up over
the two "chimney-builders" on the floor.
Thus, the master of some and mastered by the rest, crushing
those beneath him and stifling under those on top of him, endeavoring
in vain to shake off all the efforts which were heaped upon him,
M. Leblanc disappeared under the horrible group of ruffians like
the wild boar beneath a howling pile of dogs and hounds.
They succeeded in overthrowing him upon the bed nearest the
window, and there they held him in awe.
The Thenardier woman had not released her clutch on his hair.
"Don't you mix yourself up in this affair," said
Thenardier. "You'll tear your shawl."
The Thenardier obeyed, as the female wolf obeys the male wolf,
with a growl.
"Now," said Thenardier, "search him, you other
fellows!"
M. Leblanc seemed to have renounced the idea of resistance.
They searched him.
He had nothing on his person except a leather purse containing
six francs, and his handkerchief.
Thenardier put the handkerchief into his own pocket.
"What!
No pocket-book?" he demanded.
"No, nor watch," replied one of the "chimney-builders."
"Never mind," murmured the masked man who carried
the big key, in the voice of a ventriloquist, "he's a tough
old fellow."
Thenardier went to the corner near the door, picked up a bundle
of ropes and threw them at the men.
"Tie him to the leg of the bed," said he.
And, catching sight of the old man who had been stretched
across the room by the blow from M. Leblanc's fist, and who made
no movement, he added:--
"Is Boulatruelle dead?"
"No," replied Bigrenaille, "he's drunk."
"Sweep him into a corner," said Thenardier.
Two of the "chimney-builders" pushed the drunken
man into the corner near the heap of old iron with their feet.
"Babet," said Thenardier in a low tone to the man
with the cudgel, "why did you bring so many; they were not
needed."
"What can you do?" replied the man with the cudgel,
"they all wanted to be in it.
This is a bad season.
There's no business going on."
The pallet on which M. Leblanc had been thrown was a sort
of hospital bed, elevated on four coarse wooden legs, roughly
hewn.
M. Leblanc let them take their own course.
The ruffians bound him securely, in an upright attitude, with
his feet on the ground at the head of the bed, the end which was
most remote from the window, and nearest to the fireplace.
When the last knot had been tied, Thenardier took a chair
and seated himself almost facing M. Leblanc.
Thenardier no longer looked like himself; in the course of
a few moments his face had passed from unbridled violence to tranquil
and cunning sweetness.
Marius found it difficult to recognize in that polished smile
of a man in official life the almost bestial mouth which had been
foaming but a moment before; he gazed with amazement on that fantastic
and alarming metamorphosis, and he felt as a man might feel who
should behold a tiger converted into a lawyer.
"Monsieur--" said Thenardier.
And dismissing with a gesture the ruffians who still kept
their hands on M. Leblanc:--
"Stand off a little, and let me have a talk with the
gentleman."
All retired towards the door.
He went on:--
"Monsieur, you did wrong to try to jump out of the window.
You might have broken your leg.
Now, if you will permit me, we will converse quietly.
In the first place, I must communicate to you an observation
which I have made which is, that you have not uttered the faintest
cry."
Thenardier was right, this detail was correct, although it
had escaped Marius in his agitation.
M. Leblanc had barely pronounced a few words, without raising
his voice, and even during his struggle with the six ruffians
near the window he had preserved the most profound and singular
silence.
Thenardier continued:--
"Mon Dieu!
You might have shouted `stop thief' a bit, and I should not
have thought it improper.
`Murder!' That, too, is said occasionally, and, so far as
I am concerned, I should not have taken it in bad part.
It is very natural that you should make a little row when
you find yourself with persons who don't inspire you with sufficient
confidence.
You might have done that, and no one would have troubled you
on that account.
You would not even have been gagged.
And I will tell you why.
This room is very private. That's its only recommendation,
but it has that in its favor. You might fire off a mortar and
it would produce about as much noise at the nearest police station
as the snores of a drunken man. Here a cannon would make a boum,
and the thunder would make a pouf. It's a handy lodging.
But, in short, you did not shout, and it is better so.
I present you my compliments, and I will tell you the conclusion
that I draw from that fact:
My dear sir, when a man shouts, who comes?
The police.
And after the police? Justice.
Well!
You have not made an outcry; that is because you don't care
to have the police and the courts come in any more than we do.
It is because,--I have long suspected it,--you have some interest
in hiding something.
On our side we have the same interest. So we can come to an
understanding."
As he spoke thus, it seemed as though Thenardier, who kept
his eyes fixed on M. Leblanc, were trying to plunge the sharp
points which darted from the pupils into the very conscience of
his prisoner. Moreover, his language, which was stamped with a
sort of moderated, subdued insolence and crafty insolence, was
reserved and almost choice, and in that rascal, who had been nothing
but a robber a short time previously, one now felt "the man
who had studied for the priesthood."
The silence preserved by the prisoner, that precaution which
had been carried to the point of forgetting all anxiety for his
own life, that resistance opposed to the first impulse of nature,
which is to utter a cry, all this, it must be confessed, now that
his attention had been called to it, troubled Marius, and affected
him with painful astonishment.
Thenardier's well-grounded observation still further obscured
for Marius the dense mystery which enveloped that grave and singular
person on whom Courfeyrac had bestowed the sobriquet of Monsieur
Leblanc.
But whoever he was, bound with ropes, surrounded with executioners,
half plunged, so to speak, in a grave which was closing in upon
him to the extent of a degree with every moment that passed, in
the presence of Thenardier's wrath, as in the presence of his
sweetness, this man remained impassive; and Marius could not refrain
from admiring at such a moment the superbly melancholy visage.
Here, evidently, was a soul which was inaccessible to terror,
and which did not know the meaning of despair.
Here was one of those men who command amazement in desperate
circumstances. Extreme as was the crisis, inevitable as was the
catastrophe, there was nothing here of the agony of the drowning
man, who opens his horror-filled eyes under the water.
Thenardier rose in an unpretending manner, went to the fireplace,
shoved aside the screen, which he leaned against the neighboring
pallet, and thus unmasked the brazier full of glowing coals, in
which the prisoner could plainly see the chisel white-hot and
spotted here and there with tiny scarlet stars.
Then Thenardier returned to his seat beside M. Leblanc.
"I continue," said he.
"We can come to an understanding. Let us arrange this
matter in an amicable way.
I was wrong to lose my temper just now, I don't know what
I was thinking of, I went a great deal too far, I said extravagant
things.
For example, because you are a millionnaire, I told you that
I exacted money, a lot of money, a deal of money.
That would not be reasonable. Mon Dieu, in spite of your riches,
you have expenses of your own-- who has not?
I don't want to ruin you, I am not a greedy fellow, after
all.
I am not one of those people who, because they have the advantage
of the position, profit by the fact to make themselves ridiculous.
Why, I'm taking things into consideration and making a sacrifice
on my side.
I only want two hundred thousand francs."
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