Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/252

224 Otherwise he would perhaps have called back the young man whom he was dismissing so categorically, and would have said to him: "So be it, unfortunate child! Leave me your little hoard, and above all never consider yourself the debtor of Gina and her father, the fated avenger of my daughter …"

Neither did Laurent suspect, at that moment, what was going to happen, but, nevertheless, he felt a dumb and thick distress rising in his heart. Before coming to the factory, he had rejoiced in the idea of becoming his own master, of possessing a real capital, almost a fortune!… And now that he held these banknotes and this gold, they were burning his pocket and disturbing him as if they did not belong to him. Really, a thief could be no more anxious than this gentleman of independent means.

He had been confident and cheerful after a different fashion the last time he had parted company with his guardian. What illusions and what hopes had he not cherished, then! With the hundred francs that he drew every month he had thought himself the richest of mortals, and now that his fortune was figured in thousands of francs, he had never been at such an utter loss to know what to do with himself, so undecided, nor had his mind ever been so agitated.

Arrived in the street, the Ditch seemed to him to be exhaling a prophetic miasma: the Ditch itself was turning against him! Paridael scented occult menaces in these emanations, but without being able to decipher their vague presage. While waiting, his ill-humor rebounded upon the manufacturer.

"What an iceberg!" he murmured, feeling a shock in every affectionate fibre. "He received me as if I were the vilest of criminals. At the end, if I had not