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With Jean-Marie the process of reconciliation had been somewhat slow. At first he was inconsolable, insisted on leaving the family, went from paroxysm to paroxysm of tears; and it was only after Anastasie had been closeted for an hour with him, alone, that she came forth, sought out the Doctor, and, with tears in her eyes, acquainted that gentleman with what had passed.

‘At first, my husband, he would hear of nothing,’ she said. ‘Imagine! if he had left us! what would the treasure be to that? Horrible treasure, it has brought all this about! At last, after he has sobbed his very heart out, he agrees to stay on a condition–we are not to mention this matter, this infamous suspicion, not even to mention the robbery. On that agreement only, the poor, cruel boy will consent to remain among his friends.’

‘But this inhibition,’ said the Doctor, ‘this embargo–it cannot possibly apply to me?’

‘To all of us,’ Anastasie assured him.

‘My cherished one,’ Desprez protested, ‘you must have misunderstood. It cannot apply to me. He would naturally come to me.’

‘Henri,’ she said, ‘it does; I swear to you it does.’

‘This is a painful, a very painful circumstance,’ the Doctor said, looking a little black. ‘I cannot affect, Anastasie, to be anything but justly wounded. I feel this, I feel it, my wife, acutely.’

‘I knew you would,’ she said. ‘But if you had seen his distress! We must make allowances, we must sacrifice our feelings.’

‘I trust, my dear, you have never found me averse to sacrifices,’ returned the Doctor very stiffly.

‘And you will let me go and tell him that you have agreed? It will be like your noble nature,’ she cried.

So it would, he perceived–it would be like his noble nature! Up jumped his spirits, triumphant at the thought. ‘Go, darling,’ he said nobly, ‘reassure him. The subject is buried; more–I make an effort, I have accustomed my will to these exertions–and it is forgotten.’

A little after, but still with swollen eyes and looking mortally sheepish, Jean-Marie reappeared and went ostentatiously about his business. He was the only unhappy member of the party that sat down that night to supper. As for the Doctor, he was radiant. He thus sang the requiem of the treasure:–

‘This has been, on the whole, a most amusing episode,’ he said. ‘We are not a penny the worse–nay, we are immensely gainers. Our philosophy has been exercised; some of the turtle is still left–the most wholesome of delicacies; I have my staff, Anastasie has her new dress, Jean-Marie is the proud possessor of a fashionable kepi. Besides, we had a glass of Hermitage last night; the glow still suffuses my memory. I was growing positively niggardly with that Hermitage, positively niggardly. Let me take the hint: we had one bottle to celebrate the appearance of our visionary fortune; let us have a second to console us for its occultation. The third I hereby dedicate to Jean-Marie’s wedding breakfast.’

CHAPTER VII. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF DESPREZ

The Doctor’s house has not yet received the compliment of a description, and it is now high time that the omission were supplied, for the house is itself an actor in the story, and one whose part is nearly at an end. Two stories in height, walls of a warm yellow, tiles of an ancient ruddy brown diversified with moss and lichen, it stood with one wall to the street in the angle of the Doctor’s property. It was roomy, draughty, and inconvenient. The large rafters were here and there engraven with rude marks and patterns; the handrail of the stair was carved in countrified arabesque; a stout timber pillar, which did duty to support the dining-room roof, bore mysterious characters on its darker side, runes, according to the Doctor; nor did he fail, when he ran over the legendary history of the house and its possessors, to dwell upon the Scandinavian scholar who had left them. Floors, doors, and rafters made a great variety of angles; every room had a particular inclination; the gable had tilted towards the garden, after the manner of a leaning tower, and one of the former proprietors had buttressed the building from that side with a great strut of wood, like the derrick of a crane. Altogether, it had many marks of ruin; it was a house for the rats to desert; and nothing but its excellent brightness–the window-glass polished and shining, the paint well scoured, the brasses radiant, the very prop all wreathed about with climbing flowers–nothing but its air of a well-tended, smiling veteran, sitting, crutch and all, in the sunny corner of a garden, marked it as a house for comfortable people to inhabit. In poor or idle management it would soon have hurried into the blackguard stages of decay. As it was, the whole family loved it, and the Doctor was never better inspired than when he narrated its imaginary story and drew the character of its successive masters, from the Hebrew merchant who had re-edified its walls after the sack of the town, and past the mysterious engraver of the runes, down to the long-headed, dirty- handed boor from whom he had himself acquired it at a ruinous expense. As for any alarm about its security, the idea had never presented itself. What had stood four centuries might well endure a little longer.