“Eh! my friend!” said Estelle, coming into the room, somewhat tired with what she had been doing.  “What is the matter?”

“My dear, we are lost,—­lost beyond recovery.  I am no longer steward of Presles, no longer in the count’s confidence.”

“Why not?”

“Pere Leger, who was in Pierrotin’s coach, told the count all about the affair of Les Moulineaux.  But that is not the thing that has cost me his favor.”

“What then?”

“Oscar spoke ill of the countess, and he told about the count’s diseases.”

“Oscar!” cried Madame Moreau.  “Ah! my dear, your sin has found you out.  It was well worth while to warm that young serpent in your bosom.  How often I have told you—­”

“Enough!” said Moreau, in a strained voice.

At this moment Estelle and her husband discovered Oscar cowering in his corner.  Moreau swooped down on the luckless lad like a hawk on its prey, took him by the collar of the coat and dragged him to the light of a window.  “Speak! what did you say to monseigneur in that coach?  What demon let loose your tongue, you who keep a doltish silence whenever I speak to you?  What did you do it for?” cried the steward, with frightful violence.

Too bewildered to weep, Oscar was dumb and motionless as a statue.

“Come with me and beg his Excellency’s pardon,” said Moreau.

“As if his Excellency cares for a little toad like that!” cried the furious Estelle.

“Come, I say, to the chateau,” repeated Moreau.

Oscar dropped like an inert mass to the ground.

“Come!” cried Moreau, his anger increasing at every instant.

“No! no! mercy!” cried Oscar, who could not bring himself to submit to a torture that seemed to him worse than death.

Moreau then took the lad by his coat, and dragged him, as he might a dead body, through the yards, which rang with the boy’s outcries and sobs.  He pulled him up the portico, and, with an arm that fury made powerful, he flung him, bellowing, and rigid as a pole, into the salon, at the very feet of the count, who, having completed the purchase of Les Moulineaux, was about to leave the salon for the dining-room with his guests.

“On your knees, wretched boy! and ask pardon of him who gave food to your mind by obtaining your scholarship.”

Oscar, his face to the ground, was foaming with rage, and did not say a word.  The spectators of the scene were shocked.  Moreau seemed no longer in his senses; his face was crimson with injected blood.

“This young man is a mere lump of vanity,” said the count, after waiting a moment for Oscar’s excuses.  “A proud man humiliates himself because he sees there is grandeur in a certain self-abasement.  I am afraid that you will never make much of that lad.”

So saying, his Excellency passed on.  Moreau took Oscar home with him; and on the way gave orders that the horses should immediately be put to Madame Moreau’s caleche.