Margueron the note that I shall now write."

So saying the count entered the keeper's lodge and wrote a line,
folding it in a way impossible to open without detection, and gave it
to the man as soon as he saw him in the saddle.

"Not a word to any one," he said, "and as for you, madame," he added
to the gamekeeper's wife, "if Moreau comes back for his horse, tell
him merely that I have taken it."

The count then crossed the park and entered the court-yard of the
chateau through the iron gates. However worn-out a man may be by the
wear and tear of public life, by his own emotions, by his own mistakes
and disappointments, the soul of any man able to love deeply at the
count's age is still young and sensitive to treachery. Monsieur de
Serizy had felt such pain at the thought that Moreau had deceived him,
that even after hearing the conversation at Saint-Brice he thought him
less an accomplice of Leger and the notary than their tool. On the
threshold of the inn, and while that conversation was still going on,
he thought of pardoning his steward after giving him a good reproof.
Strange to say, the dishonesty of his confidential agent occupied his
mind as a mere episode from the moment when Oscar revealed his
infirmities. Secrets so carefully guarded could only have been
revealed by Moreau, who had, no doubt, laughed over the hidden
troubles of his benefactor with either Madame de Serizy's former maid
or with the Aspasia of the Directory.

As he walked along the wood-path, this peer of France, this statesman,
wept as young men weep; he wept his last tears. All human feelings
were so cruelly hurt by one stroke that the usually calm man staggered