“Mademoiselle, after all, I am the one that the late Monsieur le Marquis de Grandvilain intrusted with the care of his son; in fact, I have the right to turn you out of the house if I choose; so be kind enough to allow me to guide young Chérubin as I please.”
Thereupon Turlurette held her peace, although she knew perfectly well that Jasmin was not capable of discharging her.
“A foster-child of sixteen years!” she would mutter between her teeth; “that’s a funny thing!”
Things were at this point when a servant appeared at the hôtel de Grandvilain one morning, asked for Jasmin, and told him that the late monsieur le marquis’s notary desired him to call at his office during the day, because it was very important that he should speak with him.
The old valet wondered what the notary could have to say to him; then he remembered that his young master had long since passed his fifteenth birthday, and that that was the time that his father had desired that he should be put in possession of his fortune. All this worried Jasmin, who said to himself:
“Thirty thousand francs a year, to say nothing of the additions due to the savings that I have made in fourteen years! It is a fact that it would be a pity to waste that at his foster-father’s. But still, if Monsieur Chérubin insists on staying with Nicole, I can’t use violence to compel him to return to Paris, for after all, he is his own master.”
Jasmin decided to comply with the notary’s wish. He put on his best coat, pulled a bit of his ruff out beneath his waistcoat, donned his silver buckled shoes, although they had long since ceased to be in style, and in that garb, worthy of the confidential valet of a great family, he betook himself to the office of Monsieur d’Hurbain, the notary.
When Jasmin appeared at the office, the notary was not alone; two persons were with him.
One of them, by name Edouard de Monfréville, was a man apparently thirty-six or thirty-seven years of age, who still had the bearing, the manners and all the dandified aspect of a young man. He was tall, well-built, as slender as if he were but twenty, and wore with much grace the costume of a young exquisite. His face was handsome and attractive at the same time; his features were regular, and his brown hair of a fineness and gloss which a lady might have envied; but in his great eyes, which were black and piercing, one could read sometimes a mocking expression which harmonized perfectly with the faint smile that played about his mouth; and upon his brow, which like his face bore signs of weariness, there were lines which indicated that ennui and grief had passed that way.