When Monsieur appeared in the kitchen, she became suddenly like one intoxicated, and she looked at him with ecstatic eyes.
"Oh! your big phiz!
Your big hands! Your big eyes!"
In the evening, after a silent dinner, I had an opportunity to reflect.
The idea had struck me immediately, and now it was fortified within me, that Joseph was not a stranger to this bold robbery.
I even went so far as to hope that between his Cherbourg trip and the preparation of this audacious and incomparably executed stroke there had been an evident connection.
And I remembered the answer he made to me, on the eve of his departure:
"That depends ... on a very important matter."
Although he endeavored to appear natural, I perceived in his movements, in his attitude, in his silence, an unusual embarrassment, visible only to me. I took so much satisfaction in this presentiment that I did not try to put it aside. On the contrary, I felt an intense joy in contemplating the idea. Marianne having left us alone a moment in the kitchen, I approached Joseph, and, in a coaxing, tender voice, moved by an inexpressible emotion, I asked him:
"Tell me, Joseph, that it was you who outraged the little Claire in the woods. Tell me that it was you who stole Madame's silver service."
Surprised, stupefied by this question, Joseph looked at me. Then, suddenly, without answering, he drew me to him, and, making my neck bend under a kiss that fell like a blow of a club, he said to me:
"Don't talk about that, since you are to come with me to the little cafe, and since our two souls are alike."
I remember having seen in a little salon at the Countess Fardin's a sort of Hindoo idol, horribly and murderously beautiful. At this moment Joseph resembled it. _____
Days passed, and months. Naturally the magistrates were unable to discover anything, and finally they abandoned the investigation.
Their opinion was that the crime was the work of expert burglars from Paris.
Paris has a broad back. Go look for them in the heap! This negative result made Madame indignant.
She railed violently at the magistracy, which could not recover her silver service.
But nevertheless she did not give up hope of finding "the cruet of Louis XVI," as Joseph called it.
Every day she concocted new and outlandish schemes, which she sent to the magistrates, who, tiring at last of all this nonsense, did not even answer her. At last I was reassured concerning Joseph; for I was always afraid that some catastrophe would overtake him.
Joseph had again become silent and devoted, the family servant, the rare pearl.
I cannot help puffing with laughter at the recollection of a conversation which, on the very day of the robbery, I overheard behind the door of the salon, between Madame and the prosecuting attorney, a dry little man, with thin lips and bilious complexion, whose profile was as sharp as the edge of a sword.
"You do not suspect anybody among your people?" asked the prosecuting attorney. "Your coachman?"
"Joseph!" cried Madame, scandalized, "a man who is so devoted to us, who has been in our service for more than fifteen years!
Honesty itself, Monsieur; a pearl!
He would throw himself into the fire for us."
Anxious, with wrinkled brow, she reflected:
"Unless it were this girl, the chambermaid.
I do not know her.
Perhaps she has very bad relations in Paris. Several times I have caught her drinking the table-wine and eating our prunes. A servant who drinks his master's wine is capable of anything."
And she murmured:
"One should never take servants from Paris. She is singular, indeed."
Just fancy the mean thing!
That is the way with suspicious people. They suspect everybody, save him who robs them, of course.
For I was more and more convinced that Joseph had been the soul of this affair.
For a long time I had watched him, not from any hostile feeling, as you may know, but from curiosity; and I was certain that this faithful and devoted servant, this unique pearl, was foraging in the house for all he was worth.
He stole oats, coal, eggs, all sorts of little things that could be sold without giving any trace of their origin.
And his friend, the sacristan, did not come to the harness-room in the evening for nothing, and simply to discuss the benefits of anti-Semitism. Being a circumspect, patient, prudent, methodical man, Joseph was not unaware that petty larcenies, committed daily, foot up largely at the end of the year, and I am persuaded that in this way he tripled and quadrupled his wages,—a thing never to be disdained.
I know very well that there is a difference between these little thefts and such an audacious pillage as that of the night of December 24. That proves that he liked also to work on the grand scale. How do I know that Joseph was not then a member of a gang?
Ah! how I should have liked to know all that, and how I should like to know it still.
After the evening when he gave me the kiss that to me was equivalent to a confession of the crime, when his confidence went out to me in a moment of passion, Joseph steadily denied.
In vain did I turn him this way and that, set traps for him, and wheedle him with soft words and caresses; he would not contradict himself. And he entered into the madness of Madame's hopes.
He too concocted schemes, and tried to imagine the robbery in all its details; and he beat the dogs that did not bark, and he threatened with his fist the unknown thieves, the chimerical thieves, as if he saw them running at the horizon. I did not know what to think about this impenetrable man. One day I believed him guilty; another day I believed him innocent.
And it was horribly provoking.
We met again in the harness-room in the evening, as before.
"Well, Joseph?"
"Ah! it is you, Celestine!"
"Why don't you speak to me any more?
You seem to shun me."
"Shun you?
I?