“Miserable man!” murmured the mistress.

“Oh! most miserable,” sobbed Cayrol, falling into an armchair.

Madame Desvarennes approached him, and quietly placed her hand on his shoulder.

“Cayrol, you are weeping?  Then, forgive.”

The banker arose and, with lowering brow, said: 

“No! my resolution is irrevocable.  I wish to place a world between Jeanne and Serge.  If he has not gone away by tonight my complaint will be lodged in the courts of justice.”

Madame Desvarennes no longer persisted.  She saw that the husband’s heart was permanently closed.

“It is well.  I thank you for having warned me.  You might have taken action without doing so.  Good-by, Cayrol.  I leave your conscience to judge between you and me.”

The banker bowed, and murmured: 

“Good-by!”

And with a heavy step, almost tottering, he went out.

The sun had risen, and lit up the trees in the garden.  Nature seemed to be making holiday.  The flowers perfumed the air, and in the deep blue sky swallows were flying to and fro.  This earthly joy exasperated Madame Desvarennes.  She would have liked the world to be in mourning.  She closed the window hastily, and remained lost in her own reflections.

So everything was over!  The great prosperity, the honor of the house, everything was foundering in a moment.  Even her daughter might escape from her, and follow the infamous husband whom she adored in spite of his faults—­perhaps because of his very faults—­and might drag on a weary existence in a strange land, which would terminate in death.

For that sweet and delicate child could not live without material comforts and mental ease, and her husband was doomed to go on from bad to worse, and would drag her down with him!  The mistress pictured her daughter, that child whom she had brought up with the tenderest care, dying on a pallet, and the husband, odious to the last, refusing her admission to the room where Micheline was in agony.

A fearful feeling of anger overcame her.  Her motherly love gained the mastery, and in the silence of the room she roared out these words: 

“That shall not be!”

The opening of the door recalled her to her senses, and she rose.  It was Marechal, greatly agitated.  After Cayrol’s arrival, not knowing what to do, he had gone to the Universal Credit Company, and there, to his astonishment, had found the offices closed.  He had heard from the porter, one of those superb personages dressed in blue and red cloth, who were so important in the eyes of the shareholders, that the evening before, owing to the complaint of a director, the police had entered the offices, and taken the books away, and that the official seal had been placed on the doors.  Marechal, much alarmed, had hastened back to Madame Desvarennes to apprise her of the fact.  It was evidently necessary to take immediate steps to meet this new complication.  Was this indeed the beginning of legal proceedings?  And if so how would the Prince come out of it?