“Well, but tell me what you do want.”

“I will do so,” answered Mascarin, adjusting his spectacles carefully; “but before doing so, I feel that I must give you a short account of the rise and progress of this association.”

At this statement Hortebise and Catenac sprang to their feet in surprise and terror.  “Are you mad?” said they at length, with one voice.

Mascarin shrugged his shoulders.

“Not yet,” answered he gently, “and I beg that you will permit me to go on.”

“But surely we have some voice in the matter,” faltered Catenac.

“That is enough,” exclaimed Mascarin angrily, “Am not I the head of this association?  Do you think,” he continued in tones of deep sarcasm, “that we cannot speak openly before the Marquis?”

Hortebise and the lawyer resignedly resumed their seats.  Croisenois thought that a word from him might reassure them.

“Among honest men—­” began he.

“We are not honest men,” interrupted Mascarin.  “Sir,” added he in a severe tone, “nor are you either.”

This plain speaking brought a bright flush to the face of the Marquis, who had half a mind to be angry, but policy restrained him, and he affected to look on the matter as a joke.  “Your joke is a little personal,” said he.

But Mascarin took no heed of his remark.  “Listen to me,” said he, “for we have no time to waste, and do you,” he added, turning to Paul, “pay the greatest attention.”

A moment of perfect silence ensued, broken only by the hum of voices in the outer office.

“Marquis,” said Mascarin, whose whole face blazed with a gleam of conscious power, “twenty-five years ago I and my associates were young and in a very different position.  We were honest then, and all the illusions of youth were in full force; we had faith and hope.  We all then tenanted a wretched garret in the Rue de la Harpe, and loved each other like brothers.”

“That was long, long ago,” murmured Hortebise.

“Yes,” rejoined Mascarin; “and yet the effluxion of times does not hinder me from seeing things as they then were, and my heart aches as I compare the hopes of those days with the realities of the present.  Then, Marquis, we were poor, miserably poor, and yet we all had vague hopes of future greatness.”

Croisenois endeavored to conceal a sneer; the story was not a very interesting one.

“As I said before, each one of us anticipated a brilliant career.  Catenac had gained a prize by his ’Treatise on the Transfer of Real Estate,’ and Hortebise had written a pamphlet regarding which the great Orfila had testified approval.  Nor was I without my successes.  Hortebise had unluckily quarrelled with his family.  Catenac’s relatives were poor, and I, well, I had no family.  I stood alone.  We were literally starving, and I was the only one earning money.  I prepared pupils for the military colleges, but as I only earned twenty-five