Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/356

 and, if you do not save your son, who is perhaps not menaced, you will save your soul and your honor. In a community like this, in a little town where every one’s eyes are upon you, and where all is found out although all is not known, how can you hide a fortune wrongfully acquired? Come, my dear son, an innocent man would not have let me talk so long.”

“Go to the devil!” cried Minoret, “I don’t know why you all go at me. I would rather have these stones, they leave me in peace.”

“Good-bye. You have been warned by me, monsieur, without either the poor child or myself having said a single word to anybody whatever. But take care! there is one man who has his eye upon you. God have pity upon you!”

The curé went away; but, after walking a few steps, he turned round to look once more at Minoret.

Minoret was holding his head in his hands, for his head was uncomfortable. Minoret was a little crazy. In the first place, he had kept the three bonds, he did not know what to do with them, he dared not go and receive them himself, he was afraid lest somebody should remark it; he did not want to sell them, and was trying to find some way of transferring them. He, even he! would create romances about business in which the issue was always the transfer of the accursed bonds. In this fearful predicament, he nevertheless thought of confessing all to his wife, so as to have some advice. Zélie, who had steered her own business