Baron Trigault's Vengeance [96]
Madame Ferailleur checked him with a gesture. "Let us say no more on the subject," she remarked. "Mademoiselle Marguerite will be the innocent cause of one of the greatest disappointments of my life; but I have no reason to hate her--and I have always been able to show justice even to the persons I loved the least. I have done so in this instance, and I am going perhaps to give you a convincing proof of it."
"A proof?"
"Yes."
She reflected for a moment and then she asked: "Did you not tell me, my son, that Mademoiselle Marguerite's education has not suffered on account of her neglected childhood?"
"And it's quite true, mother."
"She worked diligently, you said, so as to improve herself?"
"Marguerite knows all that an unusually talented girl can learn in four years, when she finds herself very unhappy, and study proves her only refuge and consolation."
"If she wrote you a note would it be written grammatically, and be free from any mistakes in spelling?"
"Oh, certainly!" exclaimed Pascal, and a sudden inspiration made him pause abruptly. He darted to his own room, and a minute later he returned with a package of letters, which he laid on the table, saying: "Here, mother, read and see for yourself."
Madame Ferailleur drew her spectacles from their case, and, after adjusting them, she began to read.
With his elbows on the table, and his head resting upon his hands, Pascal eagerly watched his mother, anxious to read her impressions on her face. She was evidently astonished. She had not expected these letters would express such nobility of sentiment, an energy no whit inferior to her own, and even an echo of her own prejudices. For this strange young girl shared Madame Ferailleur's rather bigoted opinions. Again and again she asked herself if her birth and past had not created an impassable abyss between Pascal and herself. And she had not felt satisfied on this point until the day when the gray-haired magistrate, after hearing her story, said: "If I had a son, I should be proud to have him beloved by you!"
It soon became apparent that Madame Ferailleur was deeply moved, and once she even raised her glasses to wipe away a furtive tear which made Pascal's heart leap with very joy. "These letters are admirable," she said at last; "and no young girl, reared by a virtuous mother, could have given better expression to nobler sentiments; but----" She paused, not wishing to wound her son's feelings, and as he insisted, she added:
"But, these letters have the irreparable fault of being addressed to you, Pascal!"
This, however, was the expiring cry of her intractable obstinacy. "Now," she resumed, "wait before you censure your mother." So saying, she rose, opened a drawer, and taking from it a torn and crumpled scrap of paper, she handed it to her son, exclaiming: "Read this attentively."
This proved to be the note in pencil which Madame Leon had given to Pascal, and which he had divined rather than read by the light of the street-lamp; he had handed it to his mother on his return, and she had kept it. He had scarcely been in his right mind the evening he received it, but now he was enjoying the free exercise of all his faculties. He no sooner glanced at the note than he sprang up, and in an excited voice, exclaimed, "Marguerite never wrote this!"
The strange discovery seemed to stupefy him. "I was mad, raving mad!" he muttered. "The fraud is palpable, unmistakable. How could I have failed to discover it?" And as if he felt the need of convincing himself that he was not deceived, he continued, speaking to himself rather than to his mother: "The hand-writing is not unlike Marguerite's, it's true; but it's only a clever counterfeit. And who doesn't know that all writings in pencil resemble each other more or less? Besides, it's certain that Marguerite, who is simplicity itself, would not have made use of such pretentious melodramatic phrases. How could I have been so stupid as to believe that she ever thought or wrote this: 'One cannot break a promise made to the dying; I