“She has a great grudge against you, Marie, you know.  She will not be pleased when she hears that we have been talking together.”

A frown passed over his heavy brow, as though he were regretting their reconciliation, at the thought of the scene which he would have with his wife.  Jansoulet stammered: 

“I have done her no harm, however.”

“Come, come, neither of you has been very nice to her.  Think of the affront put upon her when we called after our marriage.  Your wife sending word to us that she was not in the habit of receiving quondam slaves.  As though our friendship ought not to have been stronger than a prejudice.  Women don’t forget things of that kind.”

“But no responsibility lay with me for that, old friend.  You know how proud those Afchins are.”

He was not proud himself, poor man.  His mien was so woebegone, so supplicating under his friend’s frown, that he moved him to pity.  Decidedly, the cemetery had softened the baron.

“Listen, Bernard; there is only one thing that counts.  If you want us to be friends, as formerly, and this reconciliation not to be wasted, you will have to get my wife to consent.  Without her nothing can be done.  When Mlle. Afchin shut her door in our faces you let her have her way, did you not?  In the same way, on my side, if Marie said to me when I go home, ‘I will not let you be friends,’ all my protestations now would not prevent me from throwing you overboard.  For there is no such thing as friendship in face of such difficulties.  Peace at one’s fireside is better than everything else.”

“But in that case, what is to be done?” asked the Nabob, frightened.

“I am going to tell you.  The baroness is at home every Saturday.  Come with your wife and pay her a visit the day after to-morrow.  You will find the best society in Paris at the house.  The past shall not be mentioned.  The ladies will gossip together of chiffons and frocks, talk of the things women do talk about.  And then the whole matter will be settled.  We shall become friends as we used to be; and since you are in difficulties, well, we will find some way of getting you out of them.”

“Do you think so?  The fact is I am in terrible straits,” said the other, shaking his head.

Hemerlingue’s cunning eyes disappeared again beneath the folds of his cheeks like two flies in butter.

“Well, yes; I have played a strong game.  But you don’t lack shrewdness, all the same.  The loan of the fifteen millions to the Bey—­it was a good stroke, that.  Ah! you are bold enough; only you hold your cards badly.  One can see your game.”

Till now they had been talking in low tones, impressed by the silence of the great necropolis; but little by little human interests asserted themselves in a louder key even there where their nothingness lay exposed on all those flat stones covered with dates and figures, as if death was only an affair of time and calculation—­the desired solution of a problem.