CHAPTER IV.
When Noel and old Tabaret were seated face to face in Noel's study, and the door had been carefully shut, the old fellow felt uneasy, and said: "What if your mother should require anything." "If Madame Gerdy rings," replied the young man drily, "the servant will attend to her." This indifference, this cold disdain, amazed old Tabaret, accustomed as he was to the affectionate relations always existing between mother and son.
"For heaven's sake, Noel," said he, "calm yourself.

Do not allow yourself to be overcome by a feeling of irritation.

You have, I see, some little pique against your mother, which you will have forgotten to-morrow.

Don't speak of her in this icy tone; but tell me what you mean by calling her Madame Gerdy ?" "What I mean ?" rejoined the advocate in a hollow tone,--"what I mean ?" Then rising from his arm-chair, he took several strides about the room, and, returning to his place near the old fellow, said,-- "Because, M.Tabaret, Madame Gerdy is not my mother!" This sentence fell like a heavy blow on the head of the amateur detective.
"Oh!" he said, in the tone one assumes when rejecting an absurd proposition, "do you really know what you are saying, Noel?
Is it credible?
Is it probable ?" "It is improbable," replied Noel with a peculiar emphasis which was habitual to him: "it is incredible, if you will; but yet it is true.
That is to say, for thirty-three years, ever since my birth, this woman has played a most marvellous and unworthy comedy, to ennoble and enrich her son,--for she has a son,--at my expense!" "My friend," commenced old Tabaret, who in the background of the picture presented by this singular revelation saw again the phantom of the murdered Widow Lerouge.
But Noel heard not, and seemed hardly in a state to hear.

The young man, usually so cold, so self-contained, could no longer control his anger.
At the sound of his own voice, he became more and more animated, as a good horse might at the jingling of his harness.
"Was ever man," continued he, "more cruelly deceived, more miserably duped, than I have been! I, who loved this woman, who knew not how to show my affection for her, who, for her sake, sacrificed my youth! How she must have laughed at me! Her infamy dates from the moment when for the first time she took me on her knees; and, until these few days past, she has sustained without faltering her execrable role.