Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 5).djvu/139

Rh put the dividend and check into her pocket-book, and then, standing pale and mute, awaited one kind word of consolation.

But she waited in vain.

"Now, madame," said Debray, "you have a splendid fortune, an income of about sixty thousand livres a year, which is enormous for a woman who cannot keep an establishment here for a year, at least. You will be able to indulge all your fancies; besides, should you find your income insufficient, you can, for the sake of the past, madame, make use of mine; and I am ready to offer you all I possess, on loan, that is, one million sixty thousand francs."

"Thank you, sir,—thank you," replied the baroness; "you forget that what you have just paid me is much more than a poor woman requires, who intends for some time, at least, to retire from the world."

Debray was, for a moment, surprised, but immediately recovering himself, he bowed with an air which seemed to convey—

"As you please, madame."

Madame Danglars had, until then, perhaps, hoped for something; but when she saw the careless bearing of Debray, and the glance by which it was accompanied, together with the profound reverence and significant silence which followed, she raised her head, and, without passion, or violence, or even hesitation, ran downstairs, disdaining to address a last farewell to one who could thus part from her.

"Bah!" said Debray, when she had left, "these are fine projects! she will remain at home, read novels, and speculate at cards, since she can no longer do so on the Bourse."

Then, taking up his account-book, he canceled, with the greatest care, all the amounts he had just paid away.

"I have a million and sixty thousand francs remaining," he said. "What a pity Mademoiselle de Villefort is dead! She suited me in every respect, and I would have married her."

And he phlegmatically waited till the twenty minutes had elapsed after Madame Danglars' departure before he left the house. During this time he occupied himself in making figures, with his watch by his side.

That diabolical personage, who would have been created by every fertile imagination with more or less success, if Le Sage had not acquired the priority in his chef-d'uvre, Asmodeus, who lifted off roofs to see the interior, would have enjoyed a singular spectacle, if he had lifted up the roof of the little house in the Rue Saint-Germain-des-Prés, while Debray was casting up his figures.

Above the room in which Debray had been dividing two millions and a half with Madame Danglars was another, inhabited by persons who have played too prominent a part in the incidents we have related