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Wonderful Year

<div><h1>CHAPTER XV</h1></div> THE days went on, and nothing more was said of the proposal, it being understood that, as soon as Félise had wrought order out of chaos for a second time, Martin should consult with Fortinbras, his bankers, his solicitors and other eminent advisers. They resumed their evening visits to the Café de l’Univers, where Bigourdin and Monsieur Viriot sat as far apart as was consonant with membership of the circle. On meeting they saluted each other with elaborate politeness and addressed each other as “Monsieur” when occasion required interchange of speech. Every one knew what had happened, and, as every one was determined that the strained relations between them should not interfere with his own personal comfort, nobody cared. The same games were played, the same arguments developed. A favourite theme was the probable action of the Socialists on the outbreak of war. Some held, Monsieur Viriot among them, that they would refuse to take up arms and would spread counsels of ignominy among the people. The Professor at the Ecole Normale, allowed to express latitudinarian views on account of his philosophic position, was of opinion that the only safeguard against a European war lay in the solidarity of the International Socialist Brotherhood. “The Prussian drill-sergeant,” said the Mayor, “will soon see that there is no solidarity as far as Germany is concerned.” “We have no drill-sergeants. The sous-officier is under the officer who is under the general who is bought by the men we are so besotted as to put into power to play into the hands of the enemy. Our Socialists will cleave to their infamous principles.” Thus declared Monsieur Viriot, who was a reactionary republican and regarded Socialism and Radicalism and Anti-clericalism as punishments inflicted by an outraged Heaven on a stiff-necked generation. “The Socialist will betray us,” he cried. “Monsieur,” replied Bigourdin loftily, “you are wrong to accuse the loyalty of your compatriots. I am not a socialist. I, as every one knows, hold their mischievous ideas in detestation. But I have faith in the human soul. There’s not a Socialist, not an Anarchist, not even an Apache, who, when the German cannon sounds in his ears, will not rush to shed his blood in the defence of the sacred soil of France.” “Bravo!” cried one. “C’est bien dit!” cried another. “After all, the soil is in the blood,” said a third. Monsieur Cazensac, the landlord, who stood listening, said with a certain Gascon mordancy: “Scratch even a Minister and you will find a Frenchman.” And so the discussion—and who shall say it was a profitless one?—went on evening after evening, as it had gone on, in some sort of fashion conditioned by circumstances for over forty years. On Christmas Eve came Félise, convoyed as far as Périgueux, where Bigourdin met her train, by the promised man from Cook’s. It was a changed little Félise, flushed with health and armoured in sophistication that greeted Martin. Her first preoccupation was no longer the disasters that might have occurred under helpless male rule during her absence. “I’ve had the time of my life,” she asserted with a curious lazy accent. “It would take weeks to tell you. Monte Carlo is too heavenly for words. Lucilla committed perjury and swore I was over twenty-one and got me into the rooms and into the Sports Club, and what do you think? I won a thousand francs,” she tapped her bosom. “I have it here in good French money.” Martin stared. The face was the face of Félise, but the voice was the voice of Lucilla. The English too of Félise was no longer her pretty halting speech, but fluent, as though, by her frequentation of English-speaking folk, all the old vocabulary of childhood had returned, together with sundry accretions. She rattled off a succinct account of the loveliness of the Azure Coast, with its flowers and seas and sunshine, the motor drives she had taken, the lunches, dinners and suppers she had eaten, the people she had met. Lucilla seemed to have friends everywhere, mainly English and American. They had seldom been alone. Félise had lived all the time in a social whirl. “You will find Brantôme very dull now, Félise,” said Martin. She laughed. “If you think my head’s turned, you’re mistaken. It’s a little head more solid than that.” Then, growing serious—“What I have seen and heard yonder, in a different sort of world, will enable me to form a truer judgment of things in Brantôme.” Bigourdin came near the truth when he remarked later with a smile and a sigh: “Here is our little girl transformed, in a twinkling, into a woman. She has acquired the art of hiding her troubles and of mocking at her tears. She will tell me henceforward only what it pleases her that I should know.” Félise took up her duties cheerfully, performing them with the same thoroughness as before, but with a certain new and sedate authority. Her pretty assumption of dignified command had given place to calm assertion. Euphémie and Baptiste accustomed to girlish rebukes and rejoinders grumbled at the new phase. When Félise cut short the hitherto wonted argument by a: “Ma bonne Euphémie, the way it is to be done is the way I want it done,” and marched off like a duchess unperturbed, Euphémie shook her head and wondered whether she were still in the same situation. In her attitude towards Martin, she became more formal as a mistress and more superficial as friend. She had caught the trick of easy talk, which might have disconcerted him had the world been the same as it was before the advent of Lucilla. But the world had changed. He lived in Brantôme an automatic existence, his body there, his spirit far away. His mind dwelt little on any possible deepening or hardening in the character of Félise. So her altered attitude, though he could not help noticing it, caused him no disturbance. He thought casually: “Compared with the men she has met in the great world, I am but a person of mediocre interest.” The New Year came in, heralded by snow and ice all over Europe. Beneath the steel-blue sky Brantôme looked pinched with cold. The hotel was almost empty, and Martin found it hard to occupy long hours of chilly idleness otherwise than by dreaming of Lucilla and palms and sunshine. Lucilla of course was always under the palms and the palms were in the sunshine; and he was talking to Lucilla, alone with her in the immensities of the desert. When he had dreamed long enough he shivered, for the Hôtel des Grottes still depended for warmth on wood fires and there was no central heating and the bath in the famous bathroom received hot water through a gas geyser. And then he wondered whether the time had not come for him to make his momentous journey to Paris. “I’ve had a letter from Miss Merriton,” said Félise one day, “she asks for news of you and sends you her kind regards.” Martin, who, in shirt-sleeves and apron, was laying tables in the salle-à-manger, flushed at his goddess’s message. “It’s very good of her to remember me.” “Oh, she remembers you right enough,” said Félise. That meant that his goddess must have spoken of him, not only once but on various occasions. She had carried him so far in her thoughts as to be interested in his doings. Did her words imply a veiled query as to his journey into Egypt? A lover reads an infinity of significance in his mistress’s most casual utterance, but blandly fails to interpret the obvious tone in which the woman with whom he is not in love makes an acid remark. “Where is Miss Merriton now?” he asked. She informed him coldly—not at all with the air of the wild flowers from which Alpine honey is made—that Lucilla was sailing next week for Alexandria. “And,” said she, “as I am a sort of messenger, what reply shall I make?” Martin, who had developed a lover’s cunning, answered: “Give her my respectful greetings and say that I am very well.” No form of words could be less compromising. That same evening, on their cold way back from the Café de l’Univers, Bigourdin said, using as he had done since the night of the intimate conversation the “tu” of familiarity: “Now that Félise has returned, and all goes on wheels and business is slack, don’t you think it is a good opportunity for you to go to Paris for your holiday and your consultations?” “I will go the day after to-morrow,” replied Martin. “Have you told Félise of your proposed journey?” “Not yet,” said Martin. “C’est bien. When you tell her, say it is for the sake of a change, your health, your little affairs, what you will. It is better that she should not know of our scheme until it is all arranged.” “I think that would be wiser,” said Martin. “In the event of your accepting my proposition,” said Bigourdin, after a pause, “have you ever thought of the possibility of becoming a naturalised Frenchman? Like that, perhaps, business might roll more smoothly. We have already spoken, you and I, of your becoming a good Périgordin.” Martin, hands in pockets and shoulders hunched so as to obtain ear-shelter beneath the upturned collar of his great coat, was silent for a few moments. Then— “Nationality is a strange thing,” said he. “The more I live in France, the more proud I am of being an Englishman.” Bigourdin sprang a pace apart, wounded to the quick. “Mais non par exemple! You of all men,” and it was the “vous” of formality, “ought not to say that.” “Mais que tu es bête! You misunderstand me. You don’t let me proceed,” cried Martin, halting before him in the semi-darkness of the quay. “In France I have learned the meaning of the word patriotism. I have been surrounded here with the love of country, and I have reflected. This impulse is so strong in all French hearts, ought it not to be as strong in the heart of an Englishman? France has taught me the finest of lessons. I am as loyal a Frenchman as any of our friends at the Café de l’Univers, but—” adapting a vague reminiscence of the lyric to Lucasta—“I should not love France so much, if I did not love England more.” “Mon brave ami!” cried Bigourdin, holding out both hands, in a Frenchman’s instinctive response to a noble sentiment adequately expressed, “Pardon me. Let us say no more about it. The true Englishman who loves France is a better friend to us than the Englishman who has lost his love for England.” Martin went to bed in a somewhat tortured frame of mind. He was very simple, very honest, very conscientious. It was true that the flame of French patriotism had kindled the fire of English patriotism within him. It was true that he had learned to love this sober, intense, kindly land of France. It was true that here was a generous bosom of France willing to enfold him, an alien, like one of her own sons. But it was equally true that in his ears rang a clarion call sounded not by mother England, not by foster-mother France, but by une petite sorcière Américaine, a fair witch neither of England nor of France, but from beyond the estranging seas. And the day after to-morrow he was journeying to Paris to take the advice of Fortinbras, Marchand de Bonheur. What would the dealer in happiness decide? To wait until some turn of Fortune’s wheel should change his career and set him free to wander forth across the world, or to invest his all in an inglorious though comfortable future? Either way there would be heart-racking. But Bigourdin, as he secured the Hôtel des Grottes with locks and bolts, whistled “Malbrouck s’en va-t-en guerre,” a sign of his being pleased with existence. He had no doubt of Fortinbras’s decision. Fortinbras had practically given it in a letter he had received that afternoon. For he had told Fortinbras his proposal, which was based on the certainty of a marriage between Félise and Martin, as soon as the latter should find himself in a position that would warrant a declaration up to now impossible to a man of delicate honour. “They think I am an old mole,” he had written, “but for certain things I have the eyes of a hawk. Why did Félise suddenly refuse Lucien Viriot? Why has Martin during her last absence been in a state of depression lamentable to behold? And now that Félise has returned, changed from a young girl into that thing of mystery, a woman, why are their relations once so fraternal marked by an exquisite politeness? And why must Martin travel painful hours in a train in order to consult the father of Félise? Tell me all that! When it comes to real diplomacy, mon vieux Daniel, trust the solid head of Gaspard Bigourdin.” Which excerpt affords a glimpse into the workings of a subtle yet ingenuous mind. He hummed “Malbrouck s’en var-t-en guerre” as he went upstairs. The little American witch never crossed his thoughts, nor did a possible application of the line “Ne sais quand reviendra.” <hr class='tbk'/> The High Gods hold this world in an uncertain balance; and, whenever they decree to turn things topsy-turvy, they have only to flick it the myriadth part of a millimetre. The very next day they gave it such a flick, and it was Bigourdin and not Martin who went to Paris. “Ma petite Félise,” said Bigourdin the next day, “I have received this morning from Paris a telegram despatched last night summoning me thither on urgent business. I may be away three or four days, during which I have arranged for the excellent Madame Chauvet who devoted such maternal care to you on the journey to Chartres to stay here pour les convenances.” The subtle diplomatist smiled; so that when she questioned him as to the nature of this urgent business and he replied that it was a worrying matter of lawyers and stockbrokers, she accepted the explanation. But to Martin— “Mon pauvre ami,” said he, with woe-begone face, “it is the mother of Félise. She is dying. A syncope. We must not let Félise know or she would insist on accompanying me, which would be impossible.” Martin took a detached view of the situation. “Why?” he asked. “She is a woman now and able to accept her share in the tragedy of life with courage and with reason. Why not let her go and learn the truth?” Bigourdin waved a gesture of despair. “I detest like you this deception. Lying is as foreign to my character as to yours. But que veux-tu? In the tragedy of my brother-in-law there is something at once infinitely piteous and sublime. In a matter like this the commands of a father are sacred. Ah, my poor Cécile!” said he, passing a great hand swiftly across his eyes. “Twenty years ago, what a pretty girl she was! Of a character somewhat difficult and bizarre. But I loved her more than my sister Clothilde, who had all the virtues of the petite rosaire.” He fetched a deep sigh. “One is bound to believe in the eternal wisdom of the All-Powerful. There is nothing between that and the lunatic caprice of an almighty mad goat. That is why I hold to Christianity and embark on this terrible journey with fortitude and resignation.” He held out his packet of Bastos to Martin. They lit cigarettes. To give this confidential information he had drawn Martin into the murky little bureau whose window looked upon the sad grey vestibule. “I am sorry,” he said, “that your holiday has to be postponed. But it will only be for a few days. In the meantime I leave Félise in the loyal care of yourself and the good Madame Chauvet.” <hr class='tbk'/> Bigourdin went to Paris and deposited his valise at a little hotel in a little street off the Boulevard Sébastopol, where generations of Bigourdins had stayed, perhaps even the famous Brigadier General himself; where the proposed entertainment of an Englishman would have caused the host as much consternation as that of a giraffe; where the beds were spotless, the cuisine irreproachable and other arrangements of a beloved and venerable antiquity. Here the good Périgordin found a home from his home in Périgord. The last thing a solid and virtuous citizen of central France desires to do in Paris is to Parisianise himself. The solid and virtuous inhabitants of Périgord went to the Hôtel de la Dordogne which flourishes now and feeds its customers as succulently as it did a hundred years ago. Having deposited his valise at this historic hostelry, Bigourdin proceeded to the Rue Maugrabine. He had never been there before, and his heart sank, as the heart of Félise had sunk, when he mounted the grimy, icy stairs and sought the home of Fortinbras. His sister Clothilde, severe in awful mourning, admitted him, encaged him in a ghostly embrace and conducted him into the poverty-stricken living room where Fortinbras, in rusty black and dingy white tie, stood waiting to receive him. “Unfortunately, my dear Gaspard,” said Fortinbras, “you are not in time.” He opened the flimsy door set in the paper-covered match-board partition. Bigourdin entered the bedroom and there, with blinds drawn and candles burning at head and feet lay all that remained of Cécile Fortinbras. He returned soon afterwards drying his eyes, for memories of childhood had brought tears. He wrung Fortinbras by the hand. “Here, mon vieux Daniel, is the very sad end of a life that was somewhat tragic; but you can console yourself with the thought of your long devotion and tenderness.” Clothilde Robineau tossed her head and sniffed: “I don’t see around me much evidence of those two qualities.” “Your reproaches, Clothilde,” said Fortinbras, “are as just as Gaspard’s consolation is generous.” “I am glad you acknowledge, at last, that it was you who dragged my unfortunate sister down to this misery.” Fortinbras made no reply. Lives like his one must understand and pardon as Bigourdin had done. Nothing that he could say could mitigate the animosity of Clothilde which he had originally incurred by marrying her sister. She would be moved by no pleading that it was his wife’s extravagance and intemperance that had urged him to the mad tampering with other people’s money (money honestly repaid, but all the same diverted wrongly for a time) which had caused him to be struck off the roll of solicitors and to leave England a disgraced man. She would have retorted that had he not been addicted to boissons alcooliques, a term which in France always means fiery spirits, and had he not led the life of the theatre and the restaurant, Cécile would have been sober and thrifty like herself and Gaspard. And Fortinbras would have beat his breast saying “Mea culpa.” He might have pleaded the after years of ceaseless struggle. But to what end? As soon as his wife was laid beneath the ground, Clothilde would gather together her skirts and pass for ever out of his life. Bigourdin knew of his remorse, his home of unending horror, his efforts ever frustrated, the weight at his feet that not only prevented him from rising, but dragged him gradually down, down, down. But even Bigourdin, who had not been to Paris for ten years, had not appreciated till now the depths of poverty into which Fortinbras and his sister had sunk. His last visit to them had been painful. A drunken, dishevelled hostess, especially when she is your own sister, does not make for charm. But they lived in a reputable apartment at Auteuil, and there was a good carpet on the floor of the salon and chairs and tables such as are found in Christian dwellings, and on the mantelpiece stood the ormolu clock, and on the walls hung the pictures which had once adorned their home in London. How had they come down to this? He shivered, cold and ill at ease. “As you must be hungry after your long journey, Gaspard,” said Madame Robineau, “I should advise you to go out to a restaurant. The cuisine of the femme de journée I do not recommend. For me, I must keep watch, and it being Friday I fast as usual.” Fortinbras made no pretence at hospitality. Had he been able to set forth a banquet, he felt that every morsel would have been turned into stone by the basilisk eyes of Clothilde. Both men rose simultaneously, glad to be free. They went out, took an omnibus haphazard and eventually entered a restaurant in the neighbourhood of the Tour Saint-Jacques. “Mon vieux Daniel,” said Bigourdin, as soon as they were seated. “Tell me frankly, for I don’t understand. How comes it that you are in these dreadful straits?” Fortinbras smiled sadly. “One earns little by translating from French into English and still less by dispensing happiness to youth.” “But——” Bigourdin hesitated. “But you have had other resources—not much certainly, but still something.” “What do you mean?” asked Fortinbras. “You know that in five years Cécile scattered her own dowry to the winds and left me at the edge of a whirlpool of debt. All of my own I could scrape together and borrow I threw in to save myself from prison. She had no heritage from her father. On what else can we have lived save on my precarious earnings?” Bigourdin, both elbows on the table, plucked at his upstanding bristles and gazed intently at Fortinbras. “Ever since the great misfortune, when you returned to France, Cécile has had her own income.” “You are dreaming, Gaspard. From what source could she obtain an income?” “From me, parbleu!” cried Bigourdin. “I always thought my father’s will was unjust. Cécile should have had her share. When I thought she needed assistance, I arranged with my lawyer, Maître Dupuy, 33 Rue des Augustins, Paris, to allow her five thousand francs a year in monthly instalments, and I know—sacre bleu!—that it has been paid.” Fortinbras also put his elbows on the table, and the two men looked close into each other’s faces. “I know absolutely nothing about it. Cécile has not had one penny that I have not given to her.” “It is horrible to speak like this,” said Bigourdin. “But one cannot drink to excess without spending much money. Where did she get it?” “There are alcohols unknown to the Hôtel des Grottes, which it takes little money to buy. To get that little she has pawned the sheets off the bed.” “Nom de Dieu!” said Bigourdin. It was a miserable meal, ending almost in silence. When it was over they called at the cabinet of Maître Dupuy. They found everything in order. Every month for years past Madame Fortinbras had received the sum of four hundred and sixteen francs, sixty-five centimes. She had come personally for the money. Maître Dupuy remembered his first interview with Madame. She had expressly forbidden him to send the money to the house lest it should fall into the hands of her husband. He infinitely regretted to make such a statement in the presence of Monsieur, but those were the facts. “All this is evidence in favour of what I told you,” said Fortinbras. “I never doubted you!” cried Bigourdin, “and this is proof. But what can she have done with all that money?” It was a mystery. They went back to the Rue Maugrabine. On the way Fortinbras asked: “Why have you never told me what you were doing?” “I took it for granted that you knew, and that, par délicatesse, the subject was not to be mentioned between us.” “And Clothilde?” But Bigourdin was one of those who kept the left hand in ignorance of the generous actions of the right. He threw out his great arms, to the disturbance of pedestrian traffic. “Tell Clothilde? What do you take me for?” A day or two of continuous strain and hopelessness, and then under the auspices of the Pompes Funèbres and the clergy of the parish, the poor body of Cécile Fortinbras was laid to rest. Not till then did any one send word to Félise. Even Madame Robineau agreed that it was best she should not know. As she had left Chartres, self-willed and ungovernable, so, on the receipt of the news of her mother’s death, might she leave Brantôme. Her appearance amid these squalid happenings would be inconvenable. “I have no reason to love Félise,” she added. “But she is a young girl of our family, and it is not correct that she should see such things.” When the train carrying Madame Robineau back to Chartres steamed out of the Gare Montparnasse, both men drew a breath of relief. “Mon ami,” said Bigourdin. “The Bible taught the Church the beautiful history of Jesus Christ. The Church told a Bishop. The Bishop told a priest. The priest told the wife of the sub-prefect. The wife of the sub-prefect told the wife of the mayor. The wife of the mayor told the elderly, unmarried sister of the corn-chandler, and the unmarried sister of the corn-chandler told Clothilde. And that’s all she (Clothilde) knows about Christianity. Still,” he added, in his judicious way, “she is a woman of remarkable virtue. She has a strong sense of duty. Without a particle of love animating her heart, she has just spent three days and nights without sleep, food or fresh air. It’s fine, all the same.” “I am not ungrateful,” said Fortinbras. They entered a café for the sake of shelter from the bitter January wind, and they talked, as they had done lately, of many intimate things; of the past, of Martin, of the immediate future. Fortinbras would not accompany Bigourdin to Brantôme. His presence would only add poignancy to the grief of Félise. It was more impossible now than ever to undeceive her, as one could not speak ill of the dead. No; he would remain in Paris, where he had much to do. First he must move from the Rue Maugrabine. The place would be haunted. Besides, what did one old vagabond want with two rooms and a kitchen? He would sell his few belongings, and take a furnished room somewhere among the chimney-pots. . . . Bigourdin lifted his petit verre of Armagnac, and forgetting all about it, put it down again. “What I am going to tell you,” said he, “may seem cynical, but it is only common sense. Do not leave the Rue Maugrabine without having searched every corner, every box, every garment, every piece of furniture.” “Search?—what for?” “The little economies of Cécile,” said Bigourdin. Fortinbras put up a protesting hand. Instinct revolted. “Impossible!” he declared. Bigourdin persisted. “Although you have lived long in the country and been married to a Frenchwoman, you do not know, like myself who have it in my veins, of what the peasant blood of France is capable where money is concerned. It is impossible on your own showing, that Cécile should have spent five thousand francs a year. You have seen for yourself that she received the money. What has she done with it?” He leaned across the table and with great forefinger tapped the shoulder of Fortinbras. “She has hoarded it. It is there in the Rue Maugrabine.” Fortinbras shook his leonine head. “It was absurd. In the olden days, when she had money, had she not scattered it recklessly?” Bigourdin agreed. “But then,” said he, “you struck misfortune, poverty. Did you not observe a change in her habits, and in her character? Of course, we have often spoken of it. It was the outer trappings of the bourgeois that had disappeared and the paysanne asserted herself. For many years my father supported my mother’s mother, a peasant from La Beauce who gave out that she was penniless. When she died they accidentally found the mattress of her bed stuffed with a little fortune. The blood of Grandmère Tidier ran in the veins of Cécile. And Cécile like all the family knew of the fortune of Grandmère Tidier.” All that in Fortinbras was half-forgotten, buried beneath the rubbish heap of years, again protested: his gently nurtured childhood, his smooth English home, his impeccable Anglo-Indian father, Major-General Fortinbras, who had all the servants in morning and evening for family prayers and read the lessons in the little village church on Sundays, his school-days—Winchester, with its noble traditions—all, as we English understand it, that goes to the making of an honourable gentleman. If Pactolus, dammed by his wife, poured through the kitchen taps, he would not turn them. “It is I then that will do it,” said Bigourdin. “I am not Anti-Semite in any way; but to present a Jew dealer, who is already very well off, with many thousands of francs is the act of an imbecile.” He tossed off his glass of Armagnac, beckoned the waiter, threw down the coins for payment and rose. “Allons!” said he. Fortinbras, exhausted in mind and soul, followed him. An auto-taxi took them to the Rue Maugrabine. The desolate and haggard femme de journée was restoring the house of death to some sort of aimless order. Bigourdin put a ten-franc piece into her hand. “That is for you. Come back in two hours’ time.” The woman went. The two men were left alone in the wretched little room, whose poverty stared from its cracked and faded wall paper, from its bare floor, from the greasy plush couch with one maimed leg stuck in an old salmon tin. Fortinbras threw himself with familiar recklessness on the latter article of furniture and covered his eyes with his hand. “A quarter of a century is a long time, my dear Gaspard,” said he. “A quarter of a century’s daily and nightly intimate associations with another human being leaves a deep imprint in one’s soul. I have been very unhappy, it is true. But I have never been so unhappy and so hopeless as I am now. Let me be for a little. My head is stupefied.” “Mon pauvre vieux,” said Bigourdin, very gently. He glanced around and seeing a blanket, which Clothilde had used during her vigil, neatly folded by the femme de Journée and laid upon a wooden chair, he threw it over the recumbent Fortinbras. “Mon pauvre vieux, you are exhausted. Stay there and go to sleep.” The very weary man closed his eyes. Two hours later, the femme de journée appeared. Bigourdin, with his finger to his lips, pointed to the sleeper and told her to come in the morning. It was then six o’clock in the afternoon. Bigourdin wrapped in whatever coverings he could find, dozed in a ricketty armchair for many hours, until Fortinbras awoke with a start “I must have fallen asleep,” he said. “I’m very sorry. What is the time?” Bigourdin pulled out his watch. “Midnight,” said he. Fortinbras rose, passed both hands over his white flowing hair. “I too, like Clothilde, haven’t slept for two or three nights. Sleep came upon me all of a sudden, let me see——” he touched his broad forehead—“you brought me back here for some purpose.” “I did,” said Bigourdin. “Come and see.” He took the lamp from the table and led his brother-in-law into the bedroom. “I told you so,” said he, pointing to the bed. The upper ticking had been ripped clean away. And there, in the horsehair, on the side where Cécile had slept, were five or six odd little nests. And each nest was stuffed tight with banknotes and gold. <hr class='tbk'/> “It’s all yours,” said Fortinbras. Bigourdin, swinging arms like a windmill, swept imbeciles like Fortinbras to the thirty-two points of the compass. “It is the property of Cécile. I have nothing to do with it. I am a man of honour, not a scoundrel. It belonged to Cécile. It now belongs to you.” They argued for a long time until sheer hunger sent them forth. And over supper in a little restaurant of the quarter, they argued, until at last Bigourdin, very wearied, retired to the Hôtel de la Dordogne, and Fortinbras returned to the Rue Maugrabine, to find himself the unwilling possessor of about two thousand pounds. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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