“If I cannot hush this matter up, you must kill yourself before the indictment is made out,” he whispered.  But Victurnien had sunk into such stupor, that he stared back uncomprehendingly.

“Kill myself?” he repeated.

“Yes.  If your courage should fail, my boy, count upon me,” said Chesnel, squeezing Victurnien’s hand.

In spite of the anguish of mind and tottering limbs, he stood firmly planted, to watch the son of his heart, the Comte d’Esgrignon, go out of the courtyard between two gendarmes, with the commissary, the justice of the peace, and the clerk of the court; and not until the figures had disappeared, and the sound of footsteps had died away into silence, did he recover his firmness and presence of mind.

“You will catch cold, sir,” Brigitte remonstrated.

“The devil take you!” cried her exasperated master.

Never in the nine-and-twenty years that Brigitte had been in his service had she heard such words from him!  Her candle fell out of her hands, but Chesnel neither heeded his housekeeper’s alarm nor heard her exclaim.  He hurried off towards the Val-Noble.

“He is out of his mind,” said she; “after all, it is no wonder.  But where is he off to?  I cannot possibly go after him.  What will become of him?  Suppose that he should drown himself?”

And Brigitte went to waken the head-clerk and send him to look along the river bank; the river had a gloomy reputation just then, for there had lately been two cases of suicide—­one a young man full of promise, and the other a girl, a victim of seduction.  Chesnel went straight to the Hotel du Croisier.  There lay his only hope.  The law requires that a charge of forgery must be brought by a private individual.  It was still possible to withdraw if du Croisier chose to admit that there had been a misapprehension; and Chesnel had hopes, even then, of buying the man over.

M. and Mme. du Croisier had much more company than usual that evening.  Only a few persons were in the secret.  M. du Ronceret, president of the Tribunal; M. Sauvager, deputy Public Prosecutor; and M. du Coudrai, a registrar of mortgages, who had lost his post by voting on the wrong side, were the only persons who were supposed to know about it; but Mesdames du Ronceret and du Coudrai had told the news, in strict confidence, to one or two intimate friends, so that it had spread half over the semi-noble, semi-bourgeois assembly at M. du Croisier’s.  Everybody felt the gravity of the situation, but no one ventured to speak of it openly; and, moreover, Mme. du Croisier’s attachment to the upper sphere was so well known, that people scarcely dared to mention the disaster which had befallen the d’Esgrignons or to ask for particulars.  The persons most interested were waiting till good Mme. du Croisier retired, for that lady always retreated to her room at the same hour to perform her religious exercises as far as possible out of her husband’s sight.