"Piquoizeau," said the cashier, walking into the porter's room, "what made you let anybody come up after four o'clock?""I have been smoking a pipe here in the doorway ever since four o'clock," said the man, "and nobody has gone into the bank.Nobody has come out either except the gentlemen----""Are you quite sure?"
"Yes, upon my word and honor.Stay, though, at four o'clock M.
Werbrust's friend came, a young fellow from Messrs.du Tillet & Co., in the Rue Joubert.""All right," said Castanier, and he hurried away.
The sickening sensation of heat that he had felt when he took back the pen returned in greater intensity."Mille diables!" thought he, as he threaded his way along the Boulevard de Gand, "haven't I taken proper precautions? Let me think! Two clear days, Sunday and Monday, then a day of uncertainty before they begin to look for me; altogether, three days and four nights' respite.I have a couple of passports and two different disguises; is not that enough to throw the cleverest detective off the scent? On Tuesday morning I shall draw a million francs in London before the slightest suspicion has been aroused.My debts I am leaving behind for the benefit of my creditors, who will put a 'P'* on the bills, and I shall live comfortably in Italy for the rest of my days as the Conte Ferraro.[*Protested.] I was alone with him when he died, poor fellow, in the marsh of Zembin, and I shall slip into his skin....Mille diables! the woman who is to follow after me might give them a clue! Think of an old campaigner like me infatuated enough to tie myself to a petticoat tail!...Why take her? I must leave her behind.Yes, I could make up my mind to it;but--I know myself--I should be ass enough to go back to her.Still, nobody knows Aquilina.Shall I take her or leave her?""You will not take her!" cried a voice that filled Castanier with sickening dread.He turned sharply, and saw the Englishman.
"The devil is in it!" cried the cashier aloud.
Melmoth had passed his victim by this time; and if Castanier's first impulse had been to fasten a quarrel on a man who read his own thoughts, he was so much torn up by opposing feelings that the immediate result was a temporary paralysis.When he resumed his walk he fell once more into that fever of irresolution which besets those who are so carried away by passion that they are ready to commit a crime, but have not sufficient strength of character to keep it to themselves without suffering terribly in the process.So, although Castanier had made up his mind to reap the fruits of a crime which was already half executed, he hesitated to carry out his designs.For him, as for many men of mixed character in whom weakness and strength are equally blended, the least trifling consideration determines whether they shall continue to lead blameless lives or become actively criminal.In the vast masses of men enrolled in Napoleon's armies there are many who, like Castanier, possessed the purely physical courage demanded on the battlefield, yet lacked the moral courage which makes a man as great in crime as he could have been in virtue.
The letter of credit was drafted in such terms that immediately on his arrival he might draw twenty-five thousand pounds on the firm of Watschildine, the London correspondents of the house of Nucingen.The London house had already been advised of the draft about to be made upon them, he had written to them himself.He had instructed an agent (chosen at random) to take his passage in a vessel which was to leave Portsmouth with a wealthy English family on board, who were going to Italy, and the passage-money had been paid in the name of the Conte Ferraro.The smallest details of the scheme had been thought out.He had arranged matters so as to divert the search that would be made for him into Belgium and Switzerland, while he himself was at sea in the English vessel.Then, by the time that Nucingen might flatter himself that he was on the track of his late cashier, the said cashier, as the Conte Ferraro, hoped to be safe in Naples.He had determined to disfigure his face in order to disguise himself the more completely, and by means of an acid to imitate the scars of smallpox.Yet, in spite of all these precautions, which surely seemed as if they must secure him complete immunity, his conscience tormented him; he was afraid.The even and peaceful life that he had led for so long had modified the morality of the camp.His life was stainless as yet; he could not sully it without a pang.So for the last time he abandoned himself to all the influences of the better self that strenuously resisted.
"Pshaw!" he said at last, at the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue Montmartre, "I will take a cab after the play this evening and go out to Versailles.A post-chaise will be ready for me at my old quartermaster's place.He would keep my secret even if a dozen men were standing ready to shoot him down.The chances are all in my favor, so far as I see; so I shall take my little Naqui with me, and Iwill go."
"You will not go!" exclaimed the Englishman, and the strange tones of his voice drove all the cashier's blood back to his heart.
Melmoth stepped into a tilbury which was waiting for him, and was whirled away so quickly, that when Castanier looked up he saw his foe some hundred paces away from him, and before it even crossed his mind to cut off the man's retreat the tilbury was far on its way up the Boulevard Montmartre.
"Well, upon my word, there is something supernatural about this!" said he to himself."If I were fool enough to believe in God, I should think that He had set Saint Michael on my tracks.Suppose that the devil and the police should let me go on as I please, so as to nab me in the nick of time? Did any one ever see the like! But there, this is folly..."Castanier went along the Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, slackening his pace as he neared the Rue Richer.There on the second floor of a block of buildings which looked out upon some gardens lived the unconscious cause of Castanier's crime--a young woman known in the quarter as Mme.
