Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/393

 "This very moment," exclaimed Vertua, regaining, as if by the aid of a spring, his firmness. "Come, sir, follow me!"

"In that case," continued Menars, "my carriage can take us both there, and I will give you until to-morrow to vacate."

On the road they both kept a mournful silence. When they had arrived, Vertua rang the bell softly; an old woman opened the door.

"Jesus be thanked!" exclaimed she, "you have come at last! my poor young lady Angela is in great anxiety."

"Silence!" said Vertua in a whisper. "May it be that she has not heard the bell; Angela must be ignorant of my return."

When he was alone with the chevalier, in an out of the way room,—"I have a daughter, sir," said he to him; "this is all that remains to me of an existence which might have been happy, if I had not become a victim of the passion for gambling. I formerly travelled over half of Europe, opening pharo banks everywhere, and winning, as you have done, enormous sums. God only knows how many fortunes I have reduced to nothing, as pitilessly as you have swallowed up mine to-day.—Heaven is just, I am well punished. It is not for myself that I regret fortune, but it is for Angela, for my daughter, the last object of my affection, whom I have just condemned to a frightful indigence; she is innocent of my faults, and ought not to have borne the punishment of my passions.—Alas! sir, will you not allow my daughter to carry away her clothing, her ornaments?"

"In no manner do I oppose it," answered the chevalier; "you can carry away the household utensils that are indispensible to you. I do not pretend to exercise my right on anything except upon the real property that you declared to me."

The old man Vertua fixed his moistened eyes upon the chevalier without speaking a single word. Finally, overcome by emotion, he burst out into weeping and moaning, and,

33*