Certain persons, detractors of the
Duchess, maintain that she was the first dupe of her own white magic.
A wicked slander. The Duchess believed in nothing but herself.
By the end of the year 1823 the Kellers had supplied Victurnien with
two hundred thousand francs, and neither Chesnel nor Mlle. Armande
knew anything about it. He had had, besides, two thousand crowns from
Chesnel at one time and another, the better to hide the sources on
which he was drawing. He wrote lying letters to his poor father and
aunt, who lived on, happy and deceived, like most happy people under
the sun. The insidious current of life in Paris was bringing a
dreadful catastrophe upon the great and noble house; and only one
person was in the secret of it. This was du Croisier. He rubbed his
hands gleefully as he went past in the dark and looked in at the
Antiquities. He had good hope of attaining his ends; and his ends were
not, as heretofore, the simple ruin of the d'Esgrignons, but the
dishonor of their house. He felt instinctively at such times that his
revenge was at hand; he scented it in the wind! He had been sure of it
indeed from the day when he discovered that the young Count's burden
of debt was growing too heavy for the boy to bear.
Du Croisier's first step was to rid himself of his most hated enemy,
the venerable Chesnel.
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