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.”

“Oh, if I could but see my daughter married, and die!” cried the poor woman, quite losing her head.

“Well, then, this is the way,” said the ex-perfumer.

Madame Hulot looked at Crevel with a hopeful expression, which so completely changed her countenance, that this alone ought to have touched the man’s feelings and have led him to abandon his monstrous schemes.

“You will still be handsome ten years hence,” Crevel went on, with his arms folded; “be kind to me, and Mademoiselle Hulot will marry.  Hulot has given me the right, as I have explained to you, to put the matter crudely, and he will not be angry.  In three years I have saved the interest on my capital, for my dissipations have been restricted.  I have three hundred thousand francs in the bank over and above my invested fortune—­they are yours——­”