Raoul was dazzled by this brilliant prospect.

“If you don’t decide her, you will make her waver,” he said.

“Oh!  I don’t expect a sudden change.  I only intend planting the germ in her mind; thanks to you, it will develop, flourish, and bear fruit.”

“Thanks to me?”

“Allow me to finish.  After making my speeches I shall disappear from the scene, and your role will commence.  Of course your mother will repeat the conversation to you, and then we can judge of the effect produced.  But remember, you must scorn to receive any assistance from me.  You must swear that you will brave all privation, want, famine even, rather than accept a cent from a base man whom you hate and despise; a man who—­But you know exactly what you are to say.  I can rely upon you for good acting.”

“No one can surpass me when I am interested in my part.  In pathetic roles I am always a success, when I have had time to prepare myself.”

“I know you are.  But this disinterestedness need not prevent you from resuming your dissipations.  You must gamble, bet, and lose more money than you ever did before.  You must increase your demands, and say that you must have money at all costs.  You need not account to me for any money you can extort from her.  All you get is your own to spend as you please.”

“You don’t say so!  If you mean that—­”

“You will hurry up matters, I’ll be bound.”

“I can promise you, no time shall be wasted.”

“Now listen to what you are to do, Raoul.  Before the end of three months, you must have exhausted the resources of these two women.  You must force from them every franc they can raise, so that they will be wholly unable to procure money to supply your increasing demands.  In three months I must find them penniless, absolutely ruined, without even a jewel left.”

Raoul was startled at the passionate, vindictive tone of Louis’s voice as he uttered these last words.

“You must hate these women, if you are so determined to make them miserable,” he said.

“I hate them?” cried Louis.  “Can’t you see that I madly love Madeleine, love her as only a man of my age can love?  Is not her image ever in my mind?  Does not the very mention of her name fire my heart, and make me tremble like a school-boy?”

“Your great devotion does not prevent you planning the destruction of her present happiness.”

“Necessity compels me to do so.  Nothing but the most cruel deceptions and the bitterest suffering would ever induce her to become my wife, to take me as the lesser of two evils.  The day on which you have led Mme. Fauvel and her niece to the extreme edge of the precipice, pointed out its dark depths, and convinced them that they are irretrievably lost, I shall appear, and rescue them.  I will play my part with such grandeur, such lofty magnanimity, that Madeleine will be touched, will forget her past enmity, and regard me with favorable eyes.  When she finds that it is her sweet self, and not her money, that I want, she will soften, and in time yield to my entreaties.  No true woman can be indifferent to a grand passion.  I don’t pretend to say that she will love me at first; but, if she will only consent to be mine, I ask for nothing more; time will do much, even for a poor devil like myself.”