"
"And more," said the officer. "That caprice of the old Baron's cost
four persons their lives. Oh! such passions as these are like the
cholera!"
"What had you to say to me?" asked the Baron, who took this indirect
warning very ill.
"Oh! why should I deprive you of your illusions?" replied the officer.
"Men rarely have any left at your age!"
"Rid me of them!" cried the Councillor.
"You will curse the physician later," replied the officer, smiling.
"I beg of you, monsieur."
"Well, then, that woman was in collusion with her husband."
"Oh!----"
"Yes, sir, and so it is in two cases out of every ten. Oh! we know it
well."
"What proof have you of such a conspiracy?"
"In the first place, the husband!" said the other, with the calm
acumen of a surgeon practised in unbinding wounds. "Mean speculation
is stamped in every line of that villainous face. But you, no doubt,
set great store by a certain letter written by that woman with regard
to the child?"
"So much so, that I always have it about me," replied Hulot, feeling
in his breast-pocket for the little pocketbook which he always kept
there.
"Leave your pocketbook where it is," said the man, as crushing as a
thunder-clap.
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