After a prolonged conference, the agreement was drawn up and signed, and that very day M. Fortunat took the nobleman’s interests in hand. How heartily, and with what confidence in his success, is shown by the fact that he had advanced forty thousand francs for his client’s use, out of his own private purse. After such a proof of confidence the marquis could hardly have been dissatisfied with his adviser; in point of fact, he was delighted with him, and all the more so, as this invaluable man always treated him with extreme deference, verging on servility. And in M. de Valorsay’s eyes this was a great consideration; for he was becoming more arrogant and more irascible in proportion as his right to be so diminished. Secretly disgusted with himself, and deeply humiliated by the shameful intrigue to which he had stooped, he took a secret satisfaction in crushing his accomplice with his imaginary superiority and lordly disdain. According as his humor was good or bad, he called him “my dear extortioner,” “Mons. Fortunat,” or “Master Twenty-per-cent.” But though these sneers and insults drove the obsequious smile from M. Fortunat’s lips, he was quite capable of including them in the bill under the head of sundries. The unvarying deference and submission which M. de Valorsay’s adviser displayed made his failure to keep the present appointment all the more remarkable. Such neglect of the commonest rules of courtesy was inconceivable on the part of so polite a man; and the marquis’s anger gradually changed to anxiety. “What can have happened?” he thought. He was trying to decide whether he should leave or stay, when he heard a key grate in the lock of the outer door, and then some quick steps along the ante-room. “At last--here he is!” he muttered, with a sigh of relief. He expected to see M. Fortunat enter the room at once, but he was disappointed. The agent had no desire to show himself in the garb which he had assumed for his excursion with Chupin; and so he had hastened to his room to don his wonted habiliments. He also desired a few moments for deliberation. If--as was most probably the case--M. de Valorsay were ignorant of the Count de Chalusse’s critical condition, was it advisable to tell him of it? M. Fortunat thought not, judging with reason that this would lead to a discussion and very possibly to a rupture, and he wished to avoid anything of the kind until he was quite certain of the count’s death.