Her love for me
was nothing but hypocrisy! her devotion, falsehood! her caresses,
lies! And I adored her! Ah! why can I not take back all the embraces I
bestowed on her in exchange for her Judas kisses? And for what was all
this heroism of deception, this caution, this duplicity? To betray me
more securely, to despoil me, to rob me, to give to her bastard all
that lawfully appertained to me; my name, a noble name, my fortune, a
princely inheritance!"
"We are getting near it!" thought old Tabaret, who was fast relapsing
into the colleague of M. Gevrol; then aloud he said, "This is very
serious, all that you have been saying, my dear Noel, terribly serious.
We must believe Madame Gerdy possessed of an amount of audacity and
ability rarely to be met with in a woman. She must have been assisted,
advised, compelled perhaps. Who have been her accomplices? She could
never have managed this unaided; perhaps her husband himself."
"Her husband!" interrupted the advocate, with a laugh. "Ah! you too have
believed her a widow. Pshaw! She never had a husband, the defunct Gerdy
never existed. I was a bastard, dear M. Tabaret, very much a bastard;
Noel, son of the girl Gerdy and an unknown father!"
"Ah!" cried the old fellow; "that then was the reason why your marriage
with Mademoiselle Levernois was broken off four years ago?"
"Yes, my friend, that was the reason.
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