The Tabor independent. [volume] (Tabor, S.D.) 1913-19??, 1918-06-27
III
TEETH OF THE TIGER
MAURICE LEBLANo}
M
TRANSLATED BY
ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS
CHAPTER TEN. (Continued.)

II took a good deal Of trouble
with the physical training Of the
little boy Edmond, whose health
was not what it should be. And
we also had with us, between us,
the best Of friends, the most de-
voted and affectionate counsellor,
who staunched our wounds, kept
up our courage, restored our gay
ETY., and bestowed some Of her
strength and dignity upon our
love. Florence was there"
Don Luis felt his heart beating
faster. Not that he attached the
least credit to CASTOR Sauverand's
words but he had every hope of
arriving, through those words, at
the real truth. Perhaps, also, he
was unconsciously undergoing the
Influence Of CASTOR ~Sauverand,
whose apparent frankness and
sincerity Of tone caused him a
certain surprise.
Sauverand continued:
Fifteen years before, my elder
brother, Raoul Sauverand, had
picked up, at Buenos Aires, where
he had gone to live, a little girl,
the orphan daughter of some
friends. AT his death he entrusted
the child, who was then IA, to an
old nurse who had brought me up
and who had accompanied my
brother to South America. The
old nurse brought the child to me
and herself died Of an accident a
few days after her arrival in
France. l took the little
girl to Italy to friends, where she
worked and studied and became
what she is.
wishing to live by her own re-
sources, she accepted a position as
teacher in a family. Later l rec
commended her to my Fauville
cousins with whom l found her at
Palmero as governess to the boy
Edmond and especially as the
friend, the dear and devoted
friend, Of Marie Fauville.
She was mine, also, at that happy
time, which was so sunny and all
too short. Our happiness, in fact
the happiness of all three Of us
was to be wrecked in the most
sudden and tantalizing fashion.
EVERY evening l used to write
In q diary the daily life Of my
love, an uneventful life, without
hope or future before it, but eager
and radiant. Marie Fauville was
extolled in it as a goddess. Kneel-
ing down to write, l sang litanies
OF her beauty, and l also used to
invent, as a poor compensation,
wholly imaginary scenes, in which
she said all the things which she
might have said but did not, and
promised me all the happiness
which we had voluntarily re-
nounced.
"Hippolyte Fauville found the
diary His anger was some
thing terrible. His first impulse
was to get rid Of Marie. But in
the face Of his wife's attitude, Of
the proofs of her innocence which
she supplied, of her inflexible re-
fusal to consent to a divorce, and
of her promise never to see me
again, he recovered his calmness.
-" l left, with death in my
Doul. Florence left, too, dismissed.
And never, mark me, never, since
that fatal hour, did l exchange a
single word with Marie. But an
indestructible love united us, a
love which neither absence nor
time was to weaken"
He stopped for a moment, as
though to read in Don Luis face
the effect produced by his story.
Don Luis did not conceal his
anxious attention. What aston
ished him most was CASTOR Sauve-
rand's extraordinary calmness,
the peaceful expression of his
eyes, the quiet ease with which he
set forth, without hurrying, al
most slowly and so very simply,
the story of that family tragedy.
What an actor!' he thought.
And as he thought it, he remem-
bered that Marie Fauville had
given him the same impression.
Was he then to bark back to his
first conviction and believe Marie
guilty, a dissembler like her ac:
complete, a dissembler like Flor
encef Or was he to attribute a
certain honesty to that mani
He asked:
"And afterward9"
"Afterward l travelled about.
I resumed my life Of work and
pursued my studies wherever /
went, in my bedroom at the hotels,
and in the public laboratories Of
the big towns"
"And Nine. Fauvillef"