"What ails me?" he repeated, with a deep sigh. "I might deceive you, might give you a misleading answer, but to you I cannot lie. I am in great trouble, and how to get out of it I don't know."
"But tell me what it is," said the widow, standing up in her turn.
Maitre Quennebert took three long strides, which brought him to the far end of the room, and asked--
"Why do you want to know? You can't help me. My trouble is of a kind a man does not generally confide to women."
"Good God! You are going to fight!" she exclaimed, trying to seize him by the arm. "You are going to fight!"
"Ah! if it were nothing worse than that!" said Quennebert, pacing up and down the room: "but you need not be alarmed; it is only a money trouble. I lent a large sum, a few months ago, to a friend, but the knave has run away and left me in the lurch. It was trust money, and must be replaced within three days. But where am I to get two thousand francs?"
"Yes, that is a large sum, and not easy to raise at such short notice."
"I shall be obliged to have recourse to some Jew, who will drain me dry. But I must save my good name at all costs."
Madame Rapally gazed at him in consternation. Maitre Quennebert, divining her thought, hastened to add--
"I have just one-third of what is needed."
"With great care, and by scraping together all I possess, I can make up eight hundred livres. But may I be damned in the next world, or punished as a swindler in this, and one's as bad as the other to me, if I can raise one farthing more."
"But suppose someone should lend you the twelve hundred francs, what then?"
"Pardieu! I should accept them," cried the notary as if he had not the least suspicion whom she could mean. "Do you happen to know anyone, my dear Madame Rapally?"
The widow nodded affirmatively, at the same time giving him a passionate glance.
"Tell me quick the name of this delightful person, and I shall go to him to-morrow morning. You don't know what a service you are rendering me. And I was so near not telling you of the fix I was in, lest you should torment yourself uselessly. Tell me his name."
"No, no one," said Quennebert, with the utmost innocence.
"They might. But I have mentioned the matter to no one."
"Well, Madame Rapally--I hope I don't understand you; it's not possible; you would not humiliate me. Come, come, it's a riddle, and I am too stupid to solve it. I give it up. Don't tantalise me any longer; tell me the name."