"Come, _ma chère,_ let us count these things. What is it? Pocket-book? Or--or--_what?_"
"It is _that_!" said the lady, pointing with a look of disgust to the box, which lay in its leather case on the table.
"Oh! Let us see--let us count--let us see," he said, as he was unbuckling the straps with his tremulous fingers. "We must count them--we must see to it. I have pencil and pocket-book--but--where's the key? See this cursed lock! My--! What is it? Where's the key?"
He was standing before the Countess, shuffling his feet, with his hands extended and all his fingers quivering.
"I have not got it; how could I? It is in his pocket, of course," said the lady.
In another instant the fingers of the old miscreant were in my pockets; he plucked out everything they contained, and some keys among the rest.
I lay in precisely the state in which I had been during my drive with the Marquis to Paris. This wretch, I knew, was about to rob me. The whole drama, and the Countess's _rôle_ in it, I could not yet comprehend. I could not be sure--so much more presence of mind and histrionic resource have women than fall to the lot of our clumsy sex--whether the return of the Count was not, in truth, a surprise to her; and this scrutiny of the contents of my strong box, an extempore undertaking of the Count's. But it was clearing more and more every moment: and I was destined, very soon, to comprehend minutely my appalling situation.
I had not the power of turning my eyes this way or that, the smallest fraction of a hair's breadth. But let anyone, placed as I was at the end of a room, ascertain for himself by experiment how wide is the field of sight, without the slightest alteration in the line of vision, he will find that it takes in the entire breadth of a large room, and that up to a very short distance before him; and imperfectly, by a refraction, I believe, in the eye itself, to a point very near indeed. Next to nothing that passed in the room, therefore, was hidden from me.
The old man had, by this time, found the key. The leather case was open. The box cramped round with iron was next unlocked. He turned out its contents upon the table.
"Rouleaux of a hundred Napoleons each. One, two, three. Yes, quick. Write down a thousand Napoleons. One, two; yes, right. Another thousand, _write_!" And so on and on till the gold was rapidly counted. Then came the notes.