“Indeed; how?”

“I do not know; but it will come to pass.  You see, madame, an idiot of a perfumer—­retired from business—­who has but one idea in his head, is stronger than a clever fellow who has a thousand.  I am smitten with you, and you are the means of my revenge; it is like being in love twice over.  I am speaking to you quite frankly, as a man who knows what he means.  I speak coldly to you, just as you do to me, when you say, ‘I never will be yours,’ In fact, as they say, I play the game with the cards on the table.  Yes, you shall be mine, sooner or later; if you were fifty, you should still be my mistress.  And it will be; for I expect anything from your husband!”

Madame Hulot looked at this vulgar intriguer with such a fixed stare of terror, that he thought she had gone mad, and he stopped.

“You insisted on it, you heaped me with scorn, you defied me—­and I have spoken,” said he, feeling that he must justify the ferocity of his last words.

“Oh, my daughter, my daughter,” moaned the Baroness in a voice like a dying woman’s.

“Oh!  I have forgotten all else,” Crevel went on.  “The day when I was robbed of Josepha I was like a tigress robbed of her cubs; in short, as you see me now.—­Your daughter?  Yes, I regard her as the means of winning you.  Yes, I put a spoke in her marriage—­and you will not get her married without my help!  Handsome as Mademoiselle Hortense is, she needs a fortune——­”

“Alas! yes,” said the Baroness, wiping her eyes.

“Well, just ask your husband for ten thousand francs,” said Crevel, striking his attitude once more.  He waited a minute, like an actor who has made a point.

“If he had the money, he would give it to the woman who will take Josepha’s place,” he went on, emphasizing his tones.  “Does a man ever pull up on the road he has taken?  In the first place, he is too sweet on women.  There is a happy medium in all things, as our King has told us.  And then his vanity is implicated!  He is a handsome man!—­He would bring you all to ruin for his pleasure; in fact, you are already on the highroad to the workhouse.  Why, look, never since I set foot in your house have you been able to do up your drawing-room furniture.  ‘Hard up’ is the word shouted by every slit in the stuff.  Where will you find a son-in-law who would not turn his back in horror of the ill-concealed evidence of the most cruel misery there is—­that of people in decent society?  I have kept shop, and I know.  There is no eye so quick as that of the Paris tradesman to detect real wealth from its sham.—­You have no money,” he said, in a lower voice.  “It is written everywhere, even on your man-servant’s coat.

“Would you like me to disclose any more hideous mysteries that are kept from you?”

“Monsieur,” cried Madame Hulot, whose handkerchief was wet through with her tears, “enough, enough!”

“My son-in-law, I tell you, gives his father money, and this is what I particularly wanted to come to when I began by speaking of your son’s expenses.  But I keep an eye on my daughter’s interests, be easy.”