He, who had always been so domestic, never came near his family except at meals, when he would swallow a few mouthfuls, and hastily leave the room.

Shut up in his study, he would deny himself to visitors.  His anxious countenance, his indifference to everybody and everything, his constant reveries and fits of abstraction, betrayed the preoccupation of some fixed idea, or the tyrannical empire of some hidden sorrow.

The day of Prosper’s release, about three o’clock, M. Fauvel was, as usual, seated in his study, with his elbows resting on the table, and his face buried in his hands, when his office-boy rushed in, and with a frightened look said: 

“Monsieur, the former cashier, M. Bertomy, is here with one of his relatives; he says he must see you on business.”

The banker at these words started up as if he had been shot.

“Prosper!” he cried in a voice choked by anger, “what! does he dare—­”

Then remembering that he ought to control himself before his servant, he waited a few moments, and then said, in a tone of forced calmness: 

“Ask them to walk in.”

If M. Verduret had counted upon witnessing a strange and affecting sight, he was not disappointed.

Nothing could be more terrible than the attitude of these two men as they stood confronting each other.  The banker’s face was almost purple with suppressed anger, and he looked as if about to be struck by apoplexy.  Prosper was as pale and motionless as a corpse.

Silent and immovable, they stood glaring at each other with mortal hatred.

M. Verduret curiously watched these two enemies, with the indifference and coolness of a philosopher, who, in the most violent outbursts of human passion, merely sees subjects for meditation and study.

Finally, the silence becoming more and more threatening, he decided to break it by speaking to the banker: 

“I suppose you know, monsieur, that my young relative has just been released from prison.”

“Yes,” replied M. Fauvel, making an effort to control himself, “yes, for want of sufficient proof.”

“Exactly so, monsieur, and this want of proof, as stated in the decision of ‘Not proven,’ ruins the prospects of my relative, and compels him to leave here at once for America.”

M. Fauvel’s features relaxed as if he had been relieved of some fearful agony.

“Ah, he is going away,” he said, “he is going abroad.”

There was no mistaking the resentful, almost insulting intonation of the words, “going away!”

M. Verduret took no notice of M. Fauvel’s manner.

“It appears to me,” he continued, in an easy tone, “that Prosper’s determination is a wise one.  I merely wished him, before leaving Paris, to come and pay his respects to his former chief.”

The banker smiled bitterly.

“M.  Bertomy might have spared us both this painful meeting.  I have nothing to say to him, and of course he can have nothing to tell me.”