He thus played the impecunious all the better before his wife, as his affairs were becoming more and more muddled. He was not the man to confess himself for the simple love of truth.
"But if you find yourself embarrassed," said Renée with an air of doubt, "why did you buy me that aigrette and necklace which cost you, I believe, sixty-five thousand francs? I have no use for those jewels and I shall be obliged to ask your permission to dispose of them so as to give Worms something on account."
"Never do that!" he exclaimed nervously. "If you were not seen wearing those jewels at the ball at the ministry to-morrow people would gossip about my position."
He was good-natured that morning, so he ended by smiling and muttering with a wink:
"We speculators, my dear, are like pretty women, we have our little trickeries. Pray keep your aigrette and your necklace for love of me."
He could not tell the story, for although a very amusing one, it was in somewhat questionable taste. Saccard and Laure d'Aurigny had entered into an alliance one night after supper. Laure was head over heels in debt, and was trying to find some nice young man who would kindly elope with her and take her to London. Saccard on his side felt the ground giving way beneath him; his failing imagination sought for an expedient which would show him to the public wallowing on a bed of gold and bank notes. The harlot and the speculator came to an understanding amid the semi-intoxication of dessert. He hit upon the idea of that sale of diamonds which attracted all Paris, and where amid a great fuss he purchased some jewels for his wife. Then with the product of the sale, some four hundred thousand francs, he succeeded in satisfying Laure's creditors who were owed about twice that amount. It may even be believed that he recouped a part of his sixty-five thousand francs. When he was seen liquidating the d'Aurigny's affairs, he was supposed to be her protector, people thought that he had paid her debts in full, and that he was doing all sorts of foolish things for her. Every hand was stretched out to him, and his credit returned, formidable. At the Bourse he was joked about his passion with smiles and allusions which delighted him. Meanwhile, Laure d'Aurigny, brought into notoriety by all this fuss, and with whom he did not even spend a single night, pretended she was deceiving him with eight or ten fools allured by the idea of stealing her from a man of such colossal wealth. In one month she obtained two sets of furniture and more diamonds than she had sold. Saccard had fallen into the habit of going to smoke a cigar at her place of an afternoon on leaving the Bourse; and he often perceived coat tails flying off in terror through the doorways. When he and Laure were alone they could not look at each other without laughing. He kissed her on the forehead as if she were a perverse girl whose knavery delighted him. He did not give her a copper; on the contrary, she once lent him some money to pay a gambling debt.