Meanwhile, the Dalibards were more and more with the Bellangers. Olivier
glided in to talk of the chances and changes of the State and the market.
Lucretia sat for hours listening mutely to the contractor's boasts of
past frauds, or submitting to the martyrdom of his victorious games at
tric-trac. Gabriel, a spoiled darling, copied the pictures on the walls,
complimented Madame, flattered Monsieur, and fawned on both for trinkets
and crowns. Like three birds of night and omen, these three evil natures
settled on the rich man's roof.

Was the rich man himself blind to the motives which budded forth into
such attentive affection? His penetration was too acute, his ill opinion
of mankind too strong, perhaps, for such amiable self-delusions. But he
took all in good part; availed himself of Dalibard's hints and
suggestions as to the employment of his capital; was polite to Lucretia,
and readily condemned her to be beaten at tric-trac; while he accepted
with bonhomie Gabriel's spirited copies of his pictures. But at times
there was a gleam of satire and malice in his round gray eyes, and an
inward chuckle at the caresses and flatteries he received, which
perplexed Dalibard and humbled Lucretia. Had his wealth been wholly at
his own disposal, these signs would have been inauspicious; but the new
law was strict, and the bulk of Bellanger's property could not be
alienated from his nearest kin. Was not Dalibard the nearest?

These hopes and speculations did not, as we have seen, absorb the
restless and rank energies of Dalibard's crooked, but capacious and
grasping intellect. Patiently and ingeniously he pursued his main
political object,--the detection of that audacious and complicated
conspiracy against the First Consul, which ended in the tragic deaths of
Pichegru, the Duc d'Enghien, and the erring but illustrious hero of La