“Why, it is an open secret,” replied Crevel.  “Do not let us play at guess who can!  Lisbeth must have told you.”

“My dear Monsieur Crevel,” replied Lisbeth, “there are certain names we never utter here—­”

“Well, then, it is Madame Marneffe.”

“Monsieur Crevel,” said the lawyer very sternly, “neither my wife nor I can be present at that marriage; not out of interest, for I spoke in all sincerity just now.  Yes, I am most happy to think that you may find happiness in this union; but I act on considerations of honor and good feeling which you must understand, and which I cannot speak of here, as they reopen wounds still ready to bleed——­”

The Baroness telegraphed a signal to Hortense, who tucked her little one under her arm, saying, “Come Wenceslas, and have your bath!  —­Good-bye, Monsieur Crevel.”

The Baroness also bowed to Crevel without a word; and Crevel could not help smiling at the child’s astonishment when threatened with this impromptu tubbing.

“You, monsieur,” said Victorin, when he found himself alone with Lisbeth, his wife, and his father-in-law, “are about to marry a woman loaded with the spoils of my father; it was she who, in cold blood, brought him down to such depths; a woman who is the son-in-law’s mistress after ruining the father-in-law; who is the cause of constant grief to my sister!—­And you fancy that I shall seem to sanction your madness by my presence?  I deeply pity you, dear Monsieur Crevel; you have no family feeling; you do not understand the unity of the honor which binds the members of it together.  There is no arguing with passion—­as I have too much reason to know.  The slaves of their passions are as deaf as they are blind.  Your daughter Celestine has too strong a sense of her duty to proffer a word of reproach.”

“That would, indeed, be a pretty thing!” cried Crevel, trying to cut short this harangue.

“Celestine would not be my wife if she made the slightest remonstrance,” the lawyer went on.  “But I, at least, may try to stop you before you step over the precipice, especially after giving you ample proof of my disinterestedness.  It is not your fortune, it is you that I care about.  Nay, to make it quite plain to you, I may add, if it were only to set your mind at ease with regard to your marriage contract, that I am now in a position which leaves me with nothing to wish for—­”

“Thanks to me!” exclaimed Crevel, whose face was purple.

“Thanks to Celestine’s fortune,” replied Victorin.  “And if you regret having given to your daughter as a present from yourself, a sum which is not half what her mother left her, I can only say that we are prepared to give it back.”

“And do you not know, my respected son-in-law,” said Crevel, striking an attitude, “that under the shelter of my name Madame Marneffe is not called upon to answer for her conduct excepting as my wife—­as Madame Crevel?”