day to day, and to his jaundiced eye the man who was at first simply his
rival became his mortal enemy and the object of his implacable hate, so
that at length merely to get the better of him, to outwit him, would,
after so long-continued and obstinate a struggle and so many defeats,
have seemed to him too mild a vengeance, too incomplete a victory.

Quennebert was well aware of the zeal with which the indefatigable
Trumeau sought to injure him. But he regarded the manoeuvres of his
rival with supreme unconcern, for he knew that he could at any time sweep
away the network of cunning machinations, underhand insinuations, and
malicious hints, which was spread around him, by allowing the widow to
confer on him the advantages she was so anxious to bestow. The goal, he
knew, was within his reach, but the problem he had to solve was how to
linger on the way thither, how to defer the triumphal moment, how to keep
hope alive in the fair one's breast and yet delay its fruition. His
affairs were in a bad way. Day by day full possession of the fortune
thus dangled before his eyes, and fragments of which came to him
occasionally by way of loan, was becoming more and more indispensable,
and tantalising though it was, yet he dared not put out his hand to seize
it. His creditors dunned him relentlessly: one final reprieve had been
granted him, but that at an end, if he could not meet their demands, it
was all up with his career and reputation.

One morning in the beginning of February 1660, Trumeau called to see his
cousin. He had not been there for nearly a month, and Quennebert and the
widow had begun to think that, hopeless of success, he had retired from
the contest. But, far from that, his hatred had grown more intense than
ever, and having come upon the traces of an event in the past life of his
rival which if proved would be the ruin of that rival's hopes, he set
himself to gather evidence. He now made his appearance with beaming