“Look here! the bullet which wounded your Garibaldi in the foot ought to have pierced his heart!”
And, so as not to be seen any longer in the company of these gentlemen, he entered the church, where the Abbé Mauduit’s shrill voice was responding to the lamentations of the chanters.
“He sleeps there now,” murmured the doctor, shrugging his shoulders. “Ah! what a clean sweep ought to be made of it all!” The Roman question interested him immensely. Then, as Léon reminded them of the words of the Cabinet Minister to the Senate that the Empire had sprung from the Revolution, only in order to keep it within bounds, they returned to the coming elections. All were agreed upon the necessity of giving the Emperor a lesson; but they were beginning to be troubled with anxiety, they were already divided respecting the candidates, whose names gave rise to visions of the red specter at night time. Close to them Monsieur Gourd, dressed as correctly as a diplomatist, listened with supreme contempt to what they were saying; he was for the powers that be, pure and simple.
The service was drawing to a close; a long, melancholy wail which issued from the depths of the church, silenced them.
Whilst the body was being lowered into the grave at the Père-Lachaise cemetery, Trublot, who had not let go of Octave’s arm, saw him exchange another smile with Madame Juzeur.
“Ah! yes,” murmured he, “the very unhappy little woman. Anything you like except that!”
Octave started. What! Trublot also! The latter made a gesture of disdain: no, not he, one of his friends. And, moreover, everybody who cared for that kind of thing.
“Excuse me,” added he. “As the old fellow’s now stowed away, I will go and render Duveyrier an account of something which I undertook to see after for him.”
The relations were retiring, silent and doleful. Then Trublot detained the counselor behind the others, to tell him that he had seen Clarisse’s maid; but he did not know the new address, the maid having left Clarisse the day before she moved out, after a battle royal. It was the last hope which had flown. Duveyrier buried his face in his handkerchief, and rejoined the other relations.
That very evening quarrels commenced, The family found itself in the presence of a disaster. Monsieur Vabre, with that skeptical carelessness which notaries occasionally display, had not left any will. All the furniture was ransacked in vain, and the worst was that there was not a rap of the expected six or seven hundred thousand francs, neither money, title-deeds nor shares; they discovered merely seven hundred and thirty-four francs in ten-sou pieces, the hoard of a silly, paralytic old man. And undeniable traces, a note-book covered with figures, letters from stockbrokers, opened the eyes of the next-of-kin, pale with passion, to the old fellow’s secret vice, an ungovernable passion for gambling, an unskillful and desperate craving for stock-jobbing, which he hid behind the innocent mania for his great statistical work. All had been engulfed, the money he had saved at Versailles, the rents of his house, even the sous he had sneaked from his children; and, during the latter years, he had gone to the point of mortgaging the house for one hundred and fifty thousand francs, at three different periods. The family stood thunder-stricken before the famous safe, in which it thought the fortune was locked up, but which simply contained a host of singular things, broken scraps picked up in the various rooms, pieces of old iron, fragments of glass, ends of ribbon, jumbled amidst wrecked toys stolen from young Gustave in bygone days.