Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/251

Rh of the dunghill, before they regarded the master himself with a less favourable eye.

On the other hand, the quondam domestic, who had opened a sort of hostelry between the park of Escal-Vigor and the village of Zoudbertinge, drew the unfavourable notice of the notables upon the excessive interest manifested by Henry in the ragamuffins of Klaarvatsch, the refuse of the Isle of Smaragdis.

Landrillon now often saw Balthus Bomberg. But he confined himself to entertaining the latter with the equivocal relationship of Blandine and the Count, without giving him a glimpse of a still more shocking and enormous moral irregularity.

The minister, who had cudgelled his brains to find a means of overthrowing and ruining the Dykgrave, had never contemplated, even in imagination, a weapon so maleficent as that which Landrillon counted one day upon using. Ah, the terrible explosion! If that mine one day burst the worst scoundrels would be obliged to abandon the unworthy favourite! Not a decent man on the island would again hold out his hand to the reprobate!

"What are we to do, my dear Monsieur Landrillon," the vicar, meanwhile, asked of