"Leave them in the lurch!" replied Theodose, with his lips at Cerizet's ear.
"That's a pretty thing to say!" cried Cerizet. "And so you have invented this little game of hocus-pocus because you hold in your fingers fifteen thousand francs that don't belong to you!""But I've added ten thousand francs to them. Besides, you and I know each other.""If you are able to get ten thousand francs out of your bourgeois you can surely get fifteen," said Cerizet. "For thirty thousand I'm your man. Frankness for frankness, you know.""You ask the impossible," replied Theodose. "At this very moment, if you had to do with Claparon instead of with me, your fifteen thousand would be lost, for Thuillier is to-day the owner of that house.""I'll speak to Claparon," said Cerizet, pretending to go and consult him, and mounting the stairs to the bedroom, from which Claparon had only just departed on his road to Havre.
The two adversaries had been speaking, we should here remark, in a manner not to be overheard; and every time that Theodose raised his voice Cerizet would make a gesture, intimating that Claparon, from above, might be listening. The five minutes during which Theodose heard what seemed to be the murmuring of two voices were torture to him, for he had staked his very life upon the issue. Cerizet at last came down, with a smile upon his lips, his eyes sparkling with infernal mischief, his whole frame quivering in his joy, a Lucifer of gaiety!
"I know nothing, so it seems!" he cried, shaking his shoulders, "but Claparon knows a great deal; he has worked with the big-wig bankers, and when I told what you wanted he began to laugh, and said, 'Ithought as much!' You will have to bring me the twenty-five thousand you offer me to-morrow morning, my lad; and as much more before you can recover your notes.""Why?" asked Theodose, feeling his spinal column liquidizing as if the discharge of some inward electric fluid had melted it.
"The house is ours."
"How?"
"Claparon has bit it in under the name of one of his creditors, a little toad named Sauvaignou. Desroches, the lawyer, has taken the case, and you'll get a notice to-morrow. This affair will oblige Claparon, Dutocq, and me to raise funds. What would become of me without Claparon! So I forgive him--yes, I forgave him, and though you may not believe it, my dear friend, I actually kissed him! Change your terms."The last three words were horrible to hear, especially when illustrated by the face of the speaker, who amused himself by playing a scene from the "Legataire," all the while studying attentively the Provencal's character.
"Oh, Cerizet!" cried Theodose; "I, who wished to do you so much good!""Don't you see, my dear fellow," returned Cerizet, "that between you and me there ought to be THIS,--" and he struck his heart,--"of which you have none. As soon as you thought you had a lever on us, you have tried to knock us over. I saved you from the horrors of starvation and vermin! You'll die like the idiot you are. We put you on the high-road to fortune; we gave you a fine social skin and a position in which you could grasp the future--and look what you do! NOW I know you! and from this time forth, we shall go armed.""Then it is war between us!" exclaimed Theodose.
"You fired first," returned Cerizet.
"If you pull me down, farewell to your hopes and plans; if you don't pull me down, you have in me an enemy.""That's just what I said yesterday to Dutocq; but, how can we help it?
We are forced to choose between two alternatives--we must go according to circumstances. I'm a good-natured fellow myself," he added, after a pause; "bring me your twenty-five thousand francs to-morrow morning and Thuillier shall keep the house. We'll continue to help you at both ends, but you'll have to pay up, my boy. After what has just happened that's pretty kind, isn't it?"And Cerizet patted Theodose on the shoulder, with a cynicism that seemed to brand him more than the iron of the galleys.
"Well, give me till to-morrow at mid-day," replied the Provencal, "for there'll be, as you said, some manipulation to do.""I'll try to keep Claparon quiet; he's in such a hurry, that man!""To-morrow then," said Theodose, in the tone of a man who decides his course.
"Good-night, friend," said Cerizet, in his nasal tone, which degraded the finest word in the language. "There's one who has got a mouthful to suck!" thought Cerizet, as he watched Theodose going down the street with the step of a dazed man.
When la Peyrade reached the rue des Postes he went with rapid strides to Madame Colleville's house, exciting himself as he walked along, and talking aloud. The fire of his roused passions and the sort of inward conflagration of which many Parisians are conscious (for such situations abound in Paris) brought him finally to a pitch of frenzy and eloquence which found expression, as he turned into the rue des Deux-Eglises, in the words:--"I will kill him!"
"There's a fellow who is not content!" said a passing workman, and the jesting words calmed the incandescent madness to which Theodose was a prey.
As he left Cerizet's the idea came to him to go to Flavie and tell her all. Southern natures are born thus--strong until certain passions arise, and then collapsed. He entered Flavie's room; she was alone, and when she saw Theodose she fancied her last hour had come.
"What is the matter?" she cried.
"I--I--" he said. "Do you love me, Flavie?"
"Oh! how can you doubt it?"
"Do you love me absolutely?--if I were criminal, even?""Has he murdered some one?" she thought, replying to his question by a nod.
Theodose, thankful to seize even this branch of willow, drew a chair beside Flavie's sofa, and there gave way to sobs that might have touched the oldest judge, while torrents of tears began to flow from his eyes.