h some hesitation:

"At what period did... Gilbert... begin?"

"I cannot tell you exactly. Gilbert--I prefer to call him that and not
to pronounce his real name--Gilbert, as a child, was what he is to-day:
lovable, liked by everybody, charming, but lazy and unruly. When he was
fifteen, we put him to a boarding-school in one of the suburbs, with the
deliberate object of not having him too much at home. After two years'
time he was expelled from school and sent back to us."

"Why?"

"Because of his conduct. The masters had discovered that he used to slip
out at night and also that he would disappear for weeks at a time, while
pretending to be at home with us."

"What used he to do?"

"Amuse himself backing horses, spending his time in cafes and public
dancing-rooms."

"Then he had money?"

"Yes."

"Who gave it him?"

"His evil genius, the man who, secretly, unknown to his parents, enticed
him away from school, the man who led him astray, who corrupted him, who
took him from us, who taught him to lie, to waste his substance and to
steal."

"Daubrecq?"

"Daubrecq."

Clarisse Mergy put her hands together to hide the blushes on her
forehead. She continued, in her tired voice:

"Daubrecq had taken his revenge. On the day after my husband turned our
unhappy child out of the house, Daubrecq sent us a most cynical letter
in which he revealed the odious part which he had played and the
machinations by which he had succeeded in depraving our son. And he
went on to say, 'The reformatory, one of these days... Later on, the
assize-court ... And then, let us hope and trust, the scaffold!'"

Lupin exclaimed:

"What! Did Daubrecq plot the present business?"

"No, no, that is only an accident. The hateful prophecy was just a wish
which he expressed. But oh, how it terrified me! I was ailing at the
time; my other son, my little Jacques, had just been born. And every
day we heard of some fresh misdeed of Gilbert's--forgeries, swindles--so
much so that we spread the news, in our immediate surroundings, of his
departure for abroad, followed by his death. Life was a misery; and it
became still more so when the political storm burst in which my husband
was to meet his death."

"What do you mean?"

"A word will be enough: my husband's name was on the list of the
Twenty-seven."

"Ah!"

The veil was suddenly lifted from Lupin's eyes and he saw, as in a
flash of lightning, a whole legion of things which, until then, h