The
pavement resounded with the wooden shoes of the workmen going
fieldward. No noise troubled the sad stillness of the library,
unless it were the rustling of the leaves which M. Plantat was
turning over, or now and then a groan from Robelot.
"Before commencing," said the old man, "I ought to consider your
weariness; we have been up twenty-four hours--"
But the others protested that they did not need repose. The fever
of curiosity had chased away their exhaustion. They were at last
to know the key of the mystery.
"Very well," said their host, "listen to me."
XII
The Count Hector de Tremorel, at twenty-six, was the model and
ideal of the polished man of the world, proper to our age; a man
useless alike to himself and to others, harmful even, seeming to
have been placed on earth expressly to play at the expense of all.
Young, noble, elegant, rich by millions, endowed with vigorous
health, this last descendant of a great family squandered most
foolishly and ignobly both his youth and his patrimony. He acquired
by excesses of all kinds a wide and unenviable celebrity. People
talked of his stables, his carriages, his servants, his furniture,
his dogs, his favorite loves.
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