hear them?”
He remained motionless, his feet seemingly riveted to the floor.
“That is as I expected,” he said.
And with the accent of the wretch who sees all hope vanish, and who utterly gives up all struggle,
“Be it so,” he said. “Let them arrest me, and let all be over at once. I have had enough anxiety, enough unbearable alternatives. I am tired always to feign, to deceive, and to lie. Let them arrest me! Any misfortune will be smaller in reality than the horrors of uncertainty. I have nothing more to fear now. For the first time in many years I shall sleep to-night.”
He did not notice the sinister expression of his guests. “You think I am a thief,” he added: “well, be satisfied, justice shall be done.”
But he attributed to them sentiments which were no longer theirs. They had forgotten their anger, and their bitter resentment for their lost money.
The imminence of the peril awoke suddenly in their souls the memories of the past, and that strong affection which comes from long habit, and a constant exchange of services rendered. Whatever M. Favoral might have done, they only saw in him now the friend, the host whose bread they had broken together more than a hundred times, the man whose probity, up to this fatal night, had remained far above suspicion.
Pale, excited, they crowded around him.
“Have you lost your mind?” spoke M. Desormeaux. “Are you going to wait to be arrested, thrown into prison, dragged into a criminal court?”
He shook his head, and in a tone of idiotic obstinacy,
“Have I not told you,” he repeated, “that every thing is against me? Let them come; let them do what they please with me.”
“And your wife,” insisted M. Chapelain, the old lawyer, “and your children!”
“Will they be any the less dishonored if I am condemned by default?”
Wild with grief, Mme. Favoral was wringing her hands.
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