Chapter 2

I

“When I think,” said Coleridge, “that every morning, in Paris alone, thirty thousand fellows wake up, and rise with the fixed and settled idea of appropriating other people’s money, it is with renewed wonder that every night, when I go home, I find my purse still in my pocket.”

And yet it is not those who simply aim to steal your portemonnaie who are either the most dishonest or the most formidable.

To stand at the corner of some dark street, and rush upon the first man that comes along, demanding, “Your money or your life,” is but a poor business, devoid of all prestige, and long since given up to chivalrous natures.

A man must be something worse than a simpleton to still ply his trade on the high-roads, exposed to all sorts of annoyances on the part of the gendarmes, when manufacturing and financial enterprises offer such a magnificently fertile field to the activity of imaginative people.

And, in order to thoroughly understand the mode of proceeding in this particular field, it is sufficient to open from time to time a copy of “The Police Gazette,” and to read some trial, like that, for instance, of one Lefurteux, ex-president of the Company for the Drainage and Improvement of the Orne Swamps.

This took place less than a month ago in one of the police-courts.

The Judge to the Accused--Your profession?

M. Lefurteux--President of the company.

Question--Before that what were you doing?

Answer--I speculated at the bourse.

Q--You had no means?

A--I beg your pardon: I was making money.

Q--And it was under such circumstances that you had the audacity to organize a company with a capital stock of three million of francs, divided in shares of five hundred francs?

A--Having discovered an idea, I did not suppose that I was forbidden to work it up.

Q--What do you call an idea?

A--The idea of draining swamps, and making them productive.

Q--What swamps? Yours never had any existence, except in your prospectus.

A--I expected to buy them as soon as my capital was paid in.

Q--And in the mean time you promised ten per cent to your stockholders.

A--That’s the least that draining operations ever pay.

Q--You have advertised?

A--Of course.

Q--To what extent?

A--To the extent of about sixty thousand francs.

Q--Where did you get the money?

A--I commenced with ten thousand francs, which a friend of mine had lent me; then I used the funds as they came in.

Q--In other words, you made use of the money of your first dupes to attract others?

A--Many people thought it was a good thing.

Q--Who? Those to whom you sent your prospectus with a plan of your pretended swamps?

A--Excuse me. Others too.

Q--How much money did you ever receive?

A--About six hundred thousand francs, as the expert has stated.

Q--And you have spent the whole of the money?

A--Permit me? I have never applied to my personal wants anything beyond the salary which was allowed me by the By-laws.

Q--How is it, then, that, when you were arrested, there were only twelve hundred and fifty francs found in your safe, and that amount had been sent you through the post-office that very morning? What has become of the rest?

A--The rest has been spent for the good of the company.

Q--Of course! You had a carriage?

A--It was allowed to me by Article 27 of the By-laws.

Q--For the good of the company too, I suppose.

A--Certainly. I was compelled to make a certain display. The head of an important company must endeavor to inspire confidence.

The Judge, with an Ironical Look--Was it also to inspire confidence that you had a mistress, for whom you spent considerable sums of money?

The Accused, in a Tone of Perfect Candor--Yes, sir.

After a pause of a few moments, the judge resumes,

Q--Your offices were magnificent. They must have cost you a great deal to furnish.

A--On the contrary, sir, almost nothing. The furniture was all hired. You can examine the upholsterer.

The upholsterer is sent for, and in answer to the judge’s questions,

“What M. Lefurteux has stated,” he says, “is true. My specialty is to hire office-fixtures for financial and other companies. I furnish every thing, from the book-keepers’ desks to the furniture for the president’s private room: from the iron safe to the servant’s livery. In twenty-four hours, every thing is ready, and the subscribers can come. As soon as a company is organized, like the one in question, the officers call on me, and, according to the magnitude of the capital required, I furnish a more or less costly establishment. I have a good deal of experience, and I know just what’s wanted. When M. Lefurteux came to see me, I gauged his operation at a glance. Three millions of capital, swamps in the Orne, shares of five hundred francs, small subscribers, anxious and noisy.

“‘Very well,’ I said to him, ‘it’s a six-months’ job. Don’t go into useless expenses. Take reps for your private office: that’s good enough.’”

The Judge, in a tone of Profound Surprise--You told him that?

The Upholsterer, in the Simple Accent of an Honest Man--Exactly as I am telling your Honor. He followed my advice; and I sent him red hot the furniture and fixtures which had been used by the River Fishery Company, whose president had just been sent to prison for three years.

When, after such revelations, renewed from week to week, with instructive variations, purchasers may still be found for the shares of the Tiffla Mines, the Bretoneche Lands, and the Forests of Formanoid, is it to be wondered that the Mutual Credit Company found numerous subscribers?

It had been admirably started at that propitious hour of the December Coup d’Etat, when the first ideas of mutuality were beginning to penetrate the financial world.

It had lacked neither capital nor powerful patronage at the start, and had been at once admitted to the honor of being quoted at the bourse.

Beginning business ostensibly as an accommodation bank for manufacturers and merchants, the Mutual Credit had had, for a number of years, a well-determined specialty.

But gradually it had enlarged the circle of its operations, altered its by-laws, changed its board of directors; and at the end the original subscribers would have been not a little embarrassed to tell what was the nature of its business, and from what sources it drew its profits.

All they knew was, that it always paid respectable dividends; that their manager, M. de Thaller, was personally very rich; and that they were willing to trust him to steer clear of the code.

There were some, of course, who did not view things in quite so favorable a light; who suggested that the dividends were suspiciously large; that M. de Thaller spent too much money on his house, his wife, his daughter, and his mistress.

One thing is certain, that the shares of the Mutual Credit Society were much above par, and were quoted at 580 francs on that Saturday, when, after the closing of the bourse, the rumor had spread that the cashier, Vincent Favoral, had run off with twelve millions.

“What a haul!” thought, not without a feeling of envy, more than one broker, who, for merely one-twelfth of that amount would have gayly crossed the frontier. It was almost an event in Paris.

Although such adventures are frequent enough, and not taken much notice of, in the present instance, the magnitude of the amount more than made up for the vulgarity of the act.

Favoral was generally pronounced a very smart man; and some persons declared, that to take twelve millions could hardly be called stealing.

The first question asked was,

“Is Thaller in the operation? Was he in collusion with his cashier?”

“That’s the whole question.”

“If he was, then the Mutual Credit is better off than ever: otherwise, it is gone under.”

“Thaller is pretty smart.”

“That Favoral was perhaps more so still.”

This uncertainty kept up the price for about half an hour. But soon the most disastrous news began to spread, brought, no one knew whence or by whom; and there was an irresistible panic.

From 425, at which price it had maintained itself for a time, the Mutual Credit fell suddenly to 300, then 200, and finally to 150 francs.

Some friends of M. de Thaller, M. Costeclar, for instance, had endeavored to keep up the market; but they had soon recognized the futility of their efforts, and then they had bravely commenced doing like the rest.

The next day was Sunday. From the early morning, it was reported, with the most circumstantial details, that the Baron de Thaller had been arrested.

But in the evening this had been contradicted by people who had gone to the races, and who had met there Mme. de Thaller and her daughter, more brilliant than ever, very lively, and very talkative. To the persons who went to speak to them,

“My husband was unable to come,” said the baroness. “He is busy with two of his clerks, looking over that poor Favoral’s accounts. It seems that they are in the most inconceivable confusion. Who would ever have thought such a thing of a man who lived on bread and nuts? But he operated at the bourse; and he had organized, under a false name, a sort of bank, in which he has very foolishly sunk large sums of money.”

And with a smile, as if all danger had been luckily averted,

“Fortunately,” she added, “the damage is not as great as has been reported, and this time, again, we shall get off with a good fright.”

But the speeches of the baroness were hardly sufficient to quiet the anxiety of the people who felt in their coat-pockets the worthless certificates of Mutual Credit stock.

And the next day, Monday, as early as eight o’clock, they began to arrive in crowds to demand of M. de Thaller some sort of an explanation.

They were there, at least a hundred, huddled together in the vestibule, on the stairs, and on the first landing, a prey to the most painful emotion and the most violent excitement; for they had been refused admittance.

To all those who insisted upon going in, a tall servant in livery, standing before the door, replied invariably, “The office is not open, M. de Thaller has not yet come.”

Whereupon they uttered such terrible threats and such loud imprecations, that the frightened concierge had run, and hid himself at the very bottom of his lodge.

No one can imagine to what epileptic contortions the loss of money can drive an assemblage of men, who has not seen a meeting of shareholders on the morrow of a great disaster, with their clinched fists, their convulsed faces, their glaring eyes, and foaming lips.

They felt indignant at what had once been their delight. They laid the blame of their ruin upon the splendor of the house, the sumptuousness of the stairs, the candelabras of the vestibule, the carpets, the chairs, every thing.

“And it is our money too,” they cried, “that has paid for all that!”

Standing upon a bench, a little short man was exciting transports of indignation by describing the magnificence of the Baron de Thaller’s residence, where he had once had some dealings.

He had counted five carriages in the carriage-house, fifteen horses in the stables, and Heaven knows how many servants.

He had never been inside the apartments, but he had visited the kitchen; and he declared that he had been dazzled by the number and brightness of the saucepans, ranged in order of size over the furnace.

Gathered in a group under the vestibule, the most sensible deplored their rash confidence.

“That’s the way,” concluded one, “with all these adventurous affairs.”

“That’s a fact. There’s nothing, after all, like government bonds.”

“Or a first mortgage on good property, with subrogation of the wife’s rights.”

But what exasperated them all was not to be admitted to the presence of M. de Thaller, and to see that servant mounting guard before the door.

“What impudence,” they growled, “to leave us on the stairs!--we who are the masters, after all.”

“Who knows where M. de Thaller may be?”

“He is hiding, of course.”

“No matter: I will see him,” clamored a big fat man, with a brick-colored face, “if I shouldn’t stir from here for a week.”

“You’ll see nothing at all,” giggled his neighbor. “Do you suppose they don’t have back-stairs and private entrances in this infernal shop?”

“Ah! if I believed any thing of the kind,” exclaimed the big man in a voice trembling with passion. “I’d soon break in some of these doors: it isn’t so hard, after all.”

Already he was gazing at the servant with an alarming air, when an old gentleman with a discreet look, stepped up to him, and inquired,

“Excuse me, sir: how many shares have you?”

“Three,” answered the man with the brick-colored face.

The other sighed.

“I have two hundred and fifty,” he said. “That’s why, being at least as interested as yourself in not losing every thing, I beg of you to indulge in no violent proceedings.”

There was no need of further speaking.

The door which the servant was guarding flew open. A clerk appeared, and made sign that he wished to speak.

“Gentlemen,” he began, “M. de Thaller has just come; but he is just now engaged with the examining judge.”

Shouts having drowned his voice, he withdrew precipitately.

“If the law gets its finger in,” murmured the discreet gentleman, “good-by!”

“That’s a fact,” said another. “But we will have the precious advantage of hearing that dear baron condemned to one year’s imprisonment, and a fine of fifty francs. That’s the regular rate. He wouldn’t get off so cheap, if he had stolen a loaf of bread from a baker.”

“Do you believe that story about the judge?” interrupted rudely the big man.

They had to believe it, when they saw him appear, followed by a commissary of police and a porter, carrying on his back a load of books and papers. They stood aside to let them pass; but there was no time to make any comments, as another clerk appeared immediately who said,

“M. de Thaller is at your command, gentlemen. Please walk in.”

There was then a terrible jamming and pushing to see who would get first into the directors’ room, which stood wide open.

M. de Thaller was standing against the mantel-piece, neither paler nor more excited than usual, but like a man who feels sure of himself and of his means of action. As soon as silence was restored,

“First of all, gentlemen,” he began, “I must tell you that the board of directors is about to meet, and that a general meeting of the stockholders will be called.”

Not a murmur. As at the touch of a magician’s wand, the dispositions of the shareholders seemed to have changed.

“I have nothing new to inform you of,” he went on. “What happened is a misfortune, but not a disaster. The thing to do was to save the company; and I had first thought of calling for funds.”

“Well,” said two or three timid voices, “If it was absolutely necessary--”

“But there is no need of it.”

“Ah, ah!”

“And I can manage to carry every thing through by adding to our reserve fund my own personal fortune.”

This time the hurrahs and the bravos drowned the voice.

M. de Thaller received them like a man who deserves them, and, more slowly,

“Honor commanded it,” he continued. “I confess it, gentlemen, the wretch who has so basely deceived us had my entire confidence. You will understand my apparent blindness when you know with what infernal skill he managed.”

Loud imprecations burst on all sides against Vincent Favoral. But the president of the Mutual Credit proceeded,

“For the present, all I have to ask of you is to keep cool, and continue to give me your confidence.”

“Yes, yes!”

“The panic of night before last was but a stock-gambling manoeuvre, organized by rival establishments, who were in hopes of taking our clients away from us. They will be disappointed, gentlemen. We will triumphantly demonstrate our soundness; and we shall come out of this trial more powerful than ever.”

It was all over. M. de Thaller understood his business. They offered him a vote of thanks. A smile was beaming upon the same faces that were a moment before contracted with rage.

One stockholder alone did not seem to share the general enthusiasm: he was no other than our old friend, M. Chapelain, the ex-lawyer.

“That fellow, Thaller, is just capable of getting himself out of the scrape,” he grumbled. “I must tell Maxence.”

II

We have every species of courage in France, and to a superior degree, except that of braving public opinion. Few men would have dared, like Marius de Tregars, to offer their name to the daughter of a wretch charged with embezzlement and forgery, and that at the very moment when the scandal of the crime was at its height. But, when Marius judged a thing good and just, he did it without troubling himself in the least about what others would think. And so his mere presence in the Rue. St. Gilles had brought back hope to its inmates. Of his designs he had said but a word,--“I have the means of helping you: I mean, by marrying Gilberte, to acquire the right of doing so.”

But that word had been enough. Mme. Favoral and Maxence had understood that the man who spoke thus was one of those cool and resolute men whom nothing disconcerts or discourages, and who knows how to make the best of the most perilous situations.

And, when he had retired with the Count de Villegre,

“I don’t know what he will do,” said Mlle. Gilberte to her mother and her brother: “but he will certainly do something; and, if it is humanly possible to succeed, he will succeed.”

And how proudly she spoke thus! The assistance of Marius was the justification of her conduct. She trembled with joy at the thought that it would, perhaps, be to the man whom she had alone and boldly selected, that her family would owe their salvation. Shaking his head, and making allusion to events of which he kept the secret,

“I really believe,” approved Maxence, “that, to reach the enemies of our father, M. de Tregars possesses some powerful means; and what they are we will doubtless soon know, since I have an appointment with him for to-morrow morning.”

It came at last, that morrow, which he had awaited with an impatience that neither his mother nor his sister could suspect. And towards half-past nine he was ready to go out, when M. Chapelain came in. Still irritated by the scenes he had just witnessed at the Mutual Credit office, the old lawyer had a most lugubrious countenance.

“I bring bad news,” he began. “I have just seen the Baron de Thaller.”

He had said so much the day before about having nothing more to do with it, that Maxence could not repress a gesture of surprise.

“Oh! it isn’t alone that I saw him,” added M. Chapelain, “but together with at least a hundred stockholders of the Mutual Credit.”

“They are going to do something, then?”

“No: they only came near doing something. You should have seen them this morning! They were furious; they threatened to break every thing; they wanted M. de Thaller’s blood. It was terrible. But M. de Thaller condescended to receive them; and they became at once as meek as lambs. It is perfectly simple. What do you suppose stockholders can do, no matter how exasperated they may be, when their manager tells them?

“‘Well, yes, it’s a fact you have been robbed, and your money is in great jeopardy; but if you make any fuss, if you complain thus, all is sure to be lost.’ Of course, the stockholders keep quiet. It is a well-known fact that a business which has to be liquidated through the courts is gone; and swindled stockholders fear the law almost as much as the swindling manager. A single fact will make the situation clearer to you. Less than an hour ago, M. de Thaller’s stockholders, offered him money to make up the loss.”

And, after a moment of silence,

“But this is not all. Justice has interfered; and M. de Thaller spent the morning with an examining-magistrate.”

“Well?”

“Well, I have enough experience to affirm that you must not rely any more upon justice than upon the stockholders. Unless there are proofs so evident that they are not likely to exist, M. de Thaller will not be disturbed.”

“Oh!”

“Why? Because, my dear, in all those big financial operations, justice, as much as possible, remains blind. Not through corruption or any guilty connivance, but through considerations of public interest. If the manager was prosecuted he would be condemned to a few years’ imprisonment; but his stockholders would at the same time be condemned to lose what they have left; so that the victims would be more severely punished than the swindler. And so, powerless, justice does not interfere. And that’s what accounts for the impudence and impunity of all these high-flown rascals who go about with their heads high, their pockets filled with other people’s money, and half a dozen decorations at their button-hole.”

“And what then?” asked Maxence.

“Then it is evident that your father is lost. Whether or not he did have accomplices, he will be alone sacrificed. A scapegoat is needed to be slaughtered on the altar of credit. Well, they will give that much satisfaction to the swindled stockholders. The twelve millions will be lost; but the shares of the Mutual Credit will go up, and public morality will be safe.”

Somewhat moved by the old lawyer’s tone,

“What do you advise me to do, then?” inquired Maxence.

“The very reverse of what, on the first impulse, I advised you to do. That’s why I have come. I told you yesterday, ‘Make a row, act, scream. It is impossible that your father be alone guilty; attack M. de Thaller.’ To-day, after mature deliberation, I say, ‘Keep quiet, hide yourself, let the scandal drop.’”

A bitter smile contracted Maxence’s lips.

“It is not very brave advice you are giving me there,” he said.

“It is a friend’s advice,--the advice of a man who knows life better than yourself. Poor young man, you are not aware of the peril of certain struggles. All knaves are in league and sustain each other. To attack one is to attack them all. You have no idea of the occult influences of which a man can dispose who handles millions, and who, in exchange for a favor, has always a bonus to offer, or a good operation to propose. If at least I could see any chance of success! But you have not one. You never can reach M. de Thaller, henceforth backed by his stockholders. You will only succeed in making an enemy whose hostility will weigh upon your whole life.”

“What does it matter?”

M. Chapelain shrugged his shoulders.

“If you were alone,” he went on, “I would say as you do, ‘What does it matter?’ But you are no longer alone: you have your mother and sister to take care of. You must think of food before thinking of vengeance. How much a month do you earn? Two hundred francs! It is not much for three persons. I would never suggest that you should solicit M. de Thaller’s protection; but it would be well, perhaps, to let him know that he has nothing to fear from you. Why shouldn’t you do so when you take his fifteen thousand francs back to him? If, as every thing indicates, he has been your father’s accomplice, he will certainly be touched by the distress of your family, and, if he has any heart left, he will manage to make you find, without appearing to have any thing to do with it, a situation better suited to your wants. I know that such a step must be very painful; but I repeat it, my dear child, you can no longer think of yourself alone; and what one would not do for himself, one does for a mother and a sister.”

Maxence said nothing. Not that he was in any way affected by the worthy old lawyer’s speech; but he was asking himself whether or not he should confide to him the events which in the past twenty-four hours had so suddenly modified the situation. He did not feel authorized to do so.

Marius de Tregars had not bound him to secrecy; but an indiscretion might have fatal consequences. And, after a moment of thought,

“I am obliged to you, sir,” he replied evasively, “for the interest you have manifested in our welfare; and we shall always greatly prize your advice. But for the present you must allow me to leave you with my mother and sister. I have an appointment with--a friend.”

And, without waiting for an answer, he slipped M. de Thaller’s fifteen thousand francs in his pocket, and hurried out. It was not to M. de Tregars that he went first, however, but to the Hotel des Folies.

“Mlle. Lucienne has just come home with a big bundle,” said Mme. Fortin to Maxence, with her pleasantest smile, as soon as she had seen him emerge from the shades of the corridor.

For the past twenty-four hours, the worthy hostess had been watching for her guest, in the hopes of obtaining some information which she might communicate to the neighbors. Without even condescending to answer, a piece of rudeness at which she felt much hurt, he crossed the narrow court of the hotel at a bound, and started up stairs.

Mlle. Lucienne’s room was open. He walked in, and, still out of breath from his rapid ascension,

“I am glad to find you in,” he exclaimed. The young girl was busy, arranging upon her bed a dress of very light colored silk, trimmed with ruches and lace, an overdress to match, and a bonnet of wonderful shape, loaded with the most brilliant feathers and flowers.

“You see what brings me here,” she replied. “I came home to dress. At two o’clock the carriage is coming to take me to the bois, where I am to exhibit this costume, certainly the most ridiculous that Van Klopen has yet made me wear.”

A smile flitted upon Maxence’s lips.

“Who knows,” said he, “if this is not the last time you will have to perform this odious task? Ah, my friend! what events have taken place since I last saw you!”

“Fortunate ones?”

“You will judge for yourself.”

He closed the door carefully, and, returning to Mlle. Lucienne,

“Do you know the Marquis de Tregars?” he asked.

“No more than you do. It was yesterday, at the commissary of police, that I first heard his name.”

“Well, before a month, M. de Tregars will be Mlle. Gilberte Favoral’s husband.”

“Is it possible?” exclaimed Mlle. Lucienne with a look of extreme surprise.

But, instead of answering,

“You told me,” resumed Maxence, “that once, in a day of supreme distress, you had applied to Mme. de Thaller for assistance, whereas you were actually entitled to an indemnity for having been run over and seriously hurt by her carriage.”

“That is true.”

“Whilst you were in the vestibule, waiting for an answer to your letter, which a servant had taken up stairs, M. de Thaller came in; and, when he saw you, he could not repress a gesture of surprise, almost of terror.”

“That is true too.”

“This behavior of M. de Thaller always remained an enigma to you.”

“An inexplicable one.”

“Well, I think that I can explain it to you now.”

“You?”

Lowering his voice; for he knew that at the Hotel des Folies there was always to fear some indiscreet ear.

“Yes, I,” he answered; “and for the reason that yesterday, when M. de Tregars appeared in my mother’s parlor, I could not suppress an exclamation of surprise, for the reason, Lucienne, that, between Marius de Tregars and yourself, there is a resemblance with which it is impossible not to be struck.”

Mlle. Lucienne had become very pale.

“What do you suppose, then?” she asked.

“I believe, my friend, that we are very near penetrating at once the mystery of your birth and the secret of the hatred that has pursued you since the day when you first set your foot in M. de Thaller’s house.”

Admirably self-possessed as Mlle. Lucienne usually was, the quivering of her lips betrayed at this moment the intensity of her emotion.

After more than a minute of profound meditation,

“The commissary of police,” she said, “has never told me his hopes, except in vague terms. He has told me enough, however, to make me think that he has already had suspicions similar to yours.”

“Of course! Would he otherwise have questioned me on the subject of M. de Tregars?”

Mlle. Lucienne shook her head.

“And yet,” she said, “even after your explanation, it is in vain that I seek why and how I can so far disturb M. de Thaller’s security that he wishes to do away with me.”

Maxence made a gesture of superb indifference. “I confess,” he said, “that I don’t see it either. But what matters it? Without being able to explain why, I feel that the Baron de Thaller is the common enemy, yours, mine, my father’s, and M. de Tregars’. And something tells me, that, with M. de Tregars’ help, we shall triumph. You would share my confidence, Lucienne, if you knew him. There is a man! and my sister has made no vulgar choice. If he has told my mother that he has the means of serving her, it is because he certainly has.”

He stopped, and, after a moment of silence, “Perhaps,” he went on, “the commissary of police might readily understand what I only dimly suspect; but, until further orders, we are forbidden to have recourse to him. It is not my own secret that I have just told you; and, if I have confided it to you, it is because I feel that it is a great piece of good fortune for us; and there is no joy for me, that you do not share.”

Mlle. Lucienne wanted to ask many more particulars. But, looking at his watch,

“Half-past ten!” he exclaimed, “and M. de Tregars waiting for me.”

And he started off, repeating once more to the young girl,

“I will see you to-night: until then, good hope and good courage.”

In the court, two ill-looking men were talking with the Fortins. But it happened often to the Fortins to talk with ill-looking men: so he took no notice of them, ran out to the Boulevard, and jumping into a cab,

“Rue Lafitte 70,” he cried to the driver, “I pay the trip,--three francs.”

When Marius de Tregars had finally determined to compel the bold rascals who had swindled his father to disgorge, he had taken in the Rue Lafitte a small, plainly-furnished apartment on the entresol, a fit dwelling for the man of action, the tent in which he takes shelter on the eve of battle; and he had to wait upon him an old family servant, whom he had found out of place, and who had for him that unquestioning and obstinate devotion peculiar to Breton servants.

It was this excellent man who came at the first stroke of the bell to open the door. And, as soon as Maxence had told him his name,

“Ah!” he exclaimed, “my master has been expecting you with a terrible impatience.”

It was so true, that M. de Tregars himself appeared at the same moment, and, leading Maxence into the little room which he used as a study,

“Do you know,” he said whilst shaking him cordially by the hand, “that you are almost an hour behind time?”

Maxence had, among others the detestable fault, sure indication of a weak nature, of being never willing to be in the wrong, and of having always an excuse ready. On this occasion, the excuse was too tempting to allow it to escape; and quick he began telling how he had been detained by M. Chapelain, and how he had heard from the old lawyer what had taken place at the Mutual Credit office.

“I know the scene already,” said M. de Tregars. And, fixing upon Maxence a look of friendly raillery,

“Only,” he added, “I attributed your want of punctuality to another reason, a very pretty one this time, a brunette.”

A purple cloud spread over Maxence’s cheeks.

“What!” he stammered, “you know?”

“I thought you must have been in haste to go and tell a person of your acquaintance why, when you saw me yesterday, you uttered an exclamation of surprise.”

This time Maxence lost all countenance.

“What,” he said, “you know too?”

M. de Tregars smiled.

“I know a great many things, my dear M. Maxence,” he replied; “and yet, as I do not wish to be suspected of witchcraft, I will tell you where all my science comes from. At the time when your house was closed to me, after seeking for a long time some means of hearing from your sister, I discovered at last that she had for her music-teacher an old Italian, the Signor Gismondo Pulei. I applied to him for lessons, and became his pupil. But, in the beginning, he kept looking at me with singular persistence. I inquired the reason; and he told me that he had once had for a neighbor, at the Batignolles, a young working-girl, who resembled me prodigiously. I paid no attention to this circumstance, and had, in fact, completely forgotten it; when, quite lately, Gismondo told me that he had just seen his former neighbor again, and, what’s more, arm in arm with you, and that you both entered together the Hotel des Folies. As he insisted again upon that famous resemblance, I determined to see for myself. I watched, and I stated, _de visa_, that my old Italian was not quite wrong, and that I had, perhaps, just found the weapon I was looking for.”

His eyes staring, and his mouth gaping, Maxence looked like a man fallen from the clouds.

“Ah, you did watch!” he said.

M. de Tregars snapped his fingers with a gesture of indifference.

“It is certain,” he replied, “that, for a month past, I have been doing a singular business. But it is not by remaining on my chair, preaching against the corruption of the age, that I can attain my object. The end justifies the means. Honest men are very silly, I think, to allow the rascals to get the better of them under the sentimental pretext that they cannot condescend to make use of their weapons.”

But an honorable scruple was tormenting Maxence.

“And you think yourself well-informed, sir?” he inquired. “You know Lucienne?”

“Enough to know that she is not what she seems to be, and what almost any other would have been in her place; enough to be certain, that, if she shows herself two or three times a week riding around the lake, it is not for her pleasure; enough, also, to be persuaded, that, despite appearances, she is not your mistress, and that, far from having disturbed your life, and compromised your prospects, she set you back into the right road, at the moment, perhaps, when you were about to branch off into the wrong path.”

Marius de Tregars was assuming fantastic proportions in the mind of Maxence.

“How did you manage,” he stammered, “thus to find out the truth?”

“With time and money, every thing is possible.”

“But you must have had grave reasons to take so much trouble about Lucienne.”

“Very grave ones, indeed.”

“You know that she was basely forsaken when quite a child?”

“Perfectly.”

“And that she was brought up through charity?”

“By some poor gardeners at Louveciennes: yes, I know all that.”

Maxence was trembling with joy. It seemed to him that his most dazzling hopes were about to be realized. Seizing the hands of Marius de Tregars,

“Ah, you know Lucienne’s family!” he exclaimed. But M. de Tregars shook his head.

“I have suspicions,” he answered; “but, up to this time, I have suspicions only, I assure you.”

“But that family does exist; since they have already, at three different times, attempted to get rid of the poor girl.”

“I think as you do; but we must have proofs: and we shall find some. You may rest assured of that.”

Here he was interrupted by the noise of the opening door.

The old servant came in, and advancing to the centre of the room with a mysterious look,

“Madame la Baronne de Thaller,” he said in a low voice.

Marius de Tregars started violently.

“Where?” he asked.

“She is down stairs in her carriage,” replied the servant. “Her footman is here, asking whether monsieur is at home, and whether she can come up.”

“Can she possibly have heard any thing?” murmured M. de Tregars with a deep frown. And, after a moment of reflection,

“So much the more reason to see her,” he added quickly. “Let her come. Request her to do me the honor of coming up stairs.”

This last incident completely upset all Maxence’s ideas. He no longer knew what to imagine.

“Quick,” said M. de Tregars to him: “quick, disappear; and, whatever you may hear, not a word!”

And he pushed him into his bedroom, which was divided from the study by a mere tapestry curtain. It was time; for already in the next room could be heard a great rustling of silk and starched petticoats. Mme. de Thaller appeared.

She was still the same coarsely beautiful woman, who, sixteen years before, had sat at Mme. Favoral’s table. Time had passed without scarcely touching her with the tip of his wing. Her flesh had retained its dazzling whiteness; her hair, of a bluish black, its marvelous opulence; her lips, their carmine hue; her eyes, their lustre. Her figure only had become heavier, her features less delicate; and her neck and throat had lost their undulations, and the purity of their outlines.

But neither the years, nor the millions, nor the intimacy of the most fashionable women, had been able to give her those qualities which cannot be acquired,--grace, distinction, and taste.

If there was a woman accustomed to dress, it was she: a splendid dry-goods store could have been set up with the silks and the velvets, the satins and cashmeres, the muslins, the laces, and all the known tissues, that had passed over her shoulders.

Her elegance was quoted and copied. And yet there was about her always and under all circumstances, an indescribable flavor of the _parvenue_. Her gestures had remained trivial; her voice, common and vulgar.

Throwing herself into an arm-chair, and bursting into a loud laugh,

“Confess, my dear marquis,” she said, “that you are terribly astonished to see me thus drop upon you, without warning, at eleven o’clock in the morning.”

“I feel, above all, terribly flattered,” replied M. de Tregars, smiling.

With a rapid glance she was surveying the little study, the modest furniture, the papers piled on the desk, as if she had hoped that the dwelling would reveal to her something of the master’s ideas and projects.

“I was just coming from Van Klopen’s,” she resumed; “and passing before your house, I took a fancy to come in and stir you up; and here I am.”

M. de Tregars was too much a man of the world, and of the best world, to allow his features to betray the secret of his impressions; and yet, to any one who had known him well, a certain contraction of the eyelids would have revealed a serious annoyance and an intense anxiety.

“How is the baron?” he inquired.

“As sound as an oak,” answered Mme. de Thaller, “notwithstanding all the cares and the troubles, which you can well imagine. By the way, you know what has happened to us?”

“I read in the papers that the cashier of the Mutual Credit had disappeared.”

“And it is but too true. That wretch Favoral has gone off with an enormous amount of money.”

“Twelve millions, I heard.”

“Something like it. A man who had the reputation of a saint too; a puritan. Trust people’s faces after that! I never liked him, I confess. But M. de Thaller had a perfect fancy for him; and, when he had spoken of his Favoral, there was nothing more to say. Any way, he has cleared out, leaving his family without means. A very interesting family, it seems, too,--a wife who is goodness itself, and a charming daughter: at least, so says Costeclar, who is very much in love with her.”

M. de Tregars’ countenance remained perfectly indifferent, like that of a man who is hearing about persons and things in which he does not take the slightest interest.

Mme. de Thaller noticed this.

“But it isn’t to tell you all this,” she went on, “that I came up. It is an interested motive brought me. We have, some of my friends and myself, organized a lottery--a work of charity, my dear marquis, and quite patriotic--for the benefit of the Alsatians, I have lots of tickets to dispose of; and I’ve thought of you to help me out.”

More smiling than ever,

“I am at your orders, madame,” answered Marius, “but, in mercy, spare me.”

She took out some tickets from a small shell pocket-book.

“Twenty, at ten francs,” she said. “It isn’t too much, is it?”

“It is a great deal for my modest resources.”

She pocketed the ten napoleons which he handed her, and, in a tone of ironical compassion,

“Are you so very poor, then?” she asked.

“Why, I am neither banker nor broker, you know.”

She had risen, and was smoothing the folds of her dress.

“Well, my dear marquis,” she resumed, “it is certainly not me who will pity you. When a man of your age, and with your name, remains poor, it is his own fault. Are there no rich heiresses?”

“I confess that I haven’t tried to find one yet.” She looked at him straight in the eyes, and then suddenly bursting out laughing,

“Look around you,” she said, “and I am sure you’ll not be long discovering a beautiful young girl, very blonde, who would be delighted to become Marquise de Tregars, and who would bring in her apron a dowry of twelve or fifteen hundred thousand francs in good securities,--securities which the Favorals can’t carry off. Think well, and then come to see us. You know that M. de Thaller is very fond of you; and, after all the trouble we have been having, you owe us a visit.”

Whereupon she went out, M. de Tregars going down to escort her to her carriage. But as he came up,

“Attention!” he cried to Maxence; “for it’s very evident that the Thallers have wind of something.”

III

It was a revelation, that visit of Mme. de Thaller’s; and there was no need of very much perspicacity to guess her anxiety beneath her bursts of laughter, and to understand that it was a bargain she had come to propose. It was evident, therefore, that Marius de Tregars held within his hands the principal threads of that complicated intrigue which had just culminated in that robbery of twelve millions. But would he be able to make use of them? What were his designs, and his means of action? That is what Maxence could not in any way conjecture.

He had no time to ask questions.

“Come,” said M. Tregars, whose agitation was manifest,--“come, let us breakfast: we have not a moment to lose.”

And, whilst his servant was bringing in his modest meal,

“I am expecting M. d’Escajoul,” he said. “Show him in as soon as he comes.”

Retired as he had lived from the financial world, Maxence had yet heard the name of Octave d’Escajoul.

Who has not seen him, happy and smiling, his eye bright, and his lip ruddy, notwithstanding his fifty years, walking on the sunny side of the Boulevard, with his royal blue jacket and his eternal white vest? He is passionately fond of everything that tends to make life pleasant and easy; dines at Bignon’s, or the Cafe Anglais; plays baccarat at the club with extraordinary luck; has the most comfortable apartment and the most elegant coupe in all Paris. With all this, he is pleased to declare that he is the happiest of men, and is certainly one of the most popular; for he cannot walk three blocks on the Boulevard without lifting his hat at least fifty times, and shaking hands twice as often.

And when any one asks, “What does he do?” the invariable answer is, “Why he operates.”

To explain what sort of operations, would not be, perhaps, very easy. In the world of rogues, there are some rogues more formidable and more skillful than the rest, who always manage to escape the hand of the law. They are not such fools as to operate in person,--not they! They content themselves with watching their friends and comrades. If a good haul is made, at once they appear and claim their share. And, as they always threaten to inform, there is no help for it but to let them pocket the clearest of the profit.

Well, in a more elevated sphere, in the world of speculation, it is precisely that lucrative and honorable industry which M. d’Escajoul carries on. Thoroughly master of his ground, possessing a superior scent and an imperturbable patience, always awake, and continually on the watch, he never operates unless he is sure to win.

And the day when the manager of some company has violated his charter or stretched the law a little too far, he may be sure to see M. d’Escajoul appear, and ask for some little--advantages, and proffer, in exchange, the most thorough discretion, and even his kind offices.

Two or three of his friends have heard him say,

“Who would dare to blame me? It’s very moral, what I am doing.”

Such is the man who came in, smiling, just as Maxence and Marius de Tregars had sat down at the table. M. de Tregars rose to receive him.

“You will breakfast with us?” he said.

“Thank you,” answered M. d’Escajoul. “I breakfasted precisely at eleven, as usual. Punctuality is a politeness which a man owes to his stomach. But I will accept with pleasure a drop of that old Cognac which you offered me the other evening.”

He took a seat; and the valet brought him a glass, which he set on the edge of the table. Then,

“I have just seen our man,” he said.

Maxence understood that he was referring to M. de Thaller.

“Well?” inquired M. de Tregars.

“Impossible to get any thing out of him. I turned him over and over, every way. Nothing!”

“Indeed!”

“It’s so; and you know if I understand the business. But what can you say to a man who answers you all the time, ‘The matter is in the hands of the law; experts have been named; I have nothing to fear from the most minute investigations’?”

By the look which Marius de Tregars kept riveted upon M. d’Escajoul, it was easy to see that his confidence in him was not without limits. He felt it, and, with an air of injured innocence,

“Do you suspect me, by chance,” he said, “to have allowed myself to be hoodwinked by Thaller?”

And as M. de Tregars said nothing, which was the most eloquent of answers,

“Upon my word,” he insisted, “you are wrong to doubt me. Was it you who came after me? No. It was I, who, hearing through Marcolet the history of your fortune, came to tell you, ‘Do you want to know a way of swamping Thaller?’ And the reasons I had to wish that Thaller might be swamped: I have them still. He trifled with me, he ‘sold’ me, and he must suffer for it; for, if it came to be known that I could be taken in with impunity, it would be all over with my credit.”

After a moment of silence,

“Do you believe, then,” asked M. de Tregars, “that M. de Thaller is innocent?”

“Perhaps.”

“That would be curious.”

“Or else his measures are so well taken that he has absolutely nothing to fear. If Favoral takes everything upon himself, what can they say to the other? If they have acted in collusion, the thing has been prepared for a long time; and, before commencing to fish, they must have troubled the water so well, that justice will be unable to see anything in it.”

“And you see no one who could help us?”

“Favoral--”

To Maxence’s great surprise, M. de Tregars shrugged his shoulders.

“That one is gone,” he said; “and, were he at hand, it is quite evident that if he was in collusion with M. de Thaller, he would not speak.”

“Of course.”

“That being the case, what can we do?”

“Wait.”

M. de Tregars made a gesture of discouragement.

“I might as well give up the fight, then,” he said, “and try to compromise.”

“Why so? We don’t know what may happen. Keep quiet, be patient; I am here, and I am looking out for squalls.”

He got up and prepared to leave.

“You have more experience than I have,” said M. de Tregars; “and, since that’s your opinion----”

M. d’Escajoul had resumed all his good humor.

“Very well, then, it’s understood,” he said, pressing M. de Tregars’ hand. “I am watching for both of us; and if I see a chance, I come at once, and you act.”

But the outer door had hardly closed, when suddenly the countenance of Marius de Tregars changed. Shaking the hand which M. d’Escajoul had just touched,--“Pouah!” he said with a look of thorough disgust,--“pouah!”

And noticing Maxence’s look of utter surprise,

“Don’t you understand,” he said, “that this old rascal has been sent to me by Thaller to feel my intentions, and mislead me by false information? I had scented him, fortunately; and, if either one of us is dupe of the other, I have every reason to believe that it will not be me.”

They had finished their breakfast. M. de Tregars called his servant.

“Have you been for a carriage?” he asked.

“It is at the door, sir.”

“Well, then, come along.”

Maxence had the good sense not to over-estimate himself. Perfectly convinced that he could accomplish nothing alone, he was firmly resolved to trust blindly to Marius de Tregars.

He followed him, therefore; and it was only after the carriage had started, that he ventured to ask,

“Where are we going?”

“Didn’t you hear me,” replied M. de Tregars, “order the driver to take us to the court-house?”

“I beg your pardon; but what I wish to know is, what we are going to do there?”

“You are going, my dear friend, to ask an audience of the judge who has your father’s case in charge, and deposit into his hands the fifteen thousand francs you have in your pocket.”

“What! You wish me to--”

“I think it better to place that money into the hands of justice, which will appreciate the step, than into those of M. de Thaller, who would not breathe a word about it. We are in a position where nothing should be neglected; and that money may prove an indication.”

But they had arrived. M. de Tregars guided Maxence through the labyrinth of corridors of the building, until he came to a long gallery, at the entrance of which an usher was seated reading a newspaper.

“M. Barban d’Avranchel?” inquired M. de Tregars.

“He is in his office,” replied the usher.

“Please ask him if he would receive an important deposition in the Favoral case.”

The usher rose somewhat reluctantly, and, while he was gone,

“You will go in alone,” said M. de Tregars to Maxence. “I shall not appear; and it is important that my name should not even be pronounced. But, above all, try and remember even the most insignificant words of the judge; for, upon what he tells you, I shall regulate my conduct.”

The usher returned.

“M. d’Avranchel will receive you,” he said. And, leading Maxence to the extremity of the gallery, he opened a small door, and pushed him in, saying at the same time,

“That is it, sir: walk in.”

It was a small room, with a low ceiling, and poorly furnished. The faded curtains and threadbare carpet showed plainly that more than one judge had occupied it, and that legions of accused criminals had passed through it. In front of a table, two men--one old, the judge; the other young, the clerk--were signing and classifying papers. These papers related to the Favoral case, and were all indorsed in large letters: Mutual Credit Company.

As soon as Maxence appeared, the judge rose, and, after measuring him with a clear and cold look:

“Who are you?” he interrogated.

In a somewhat husky voice, Maxence stated his name and surname.

“Ah! you are Vincent Favoral’s son,” interrupted the judge. “And it was you who helped him escape through the window? I was going to send you a summons this very day; but, since you are here, so much the better. You have something important to communicate, I have been told.”

Very few people, even among the most strictly honest, can overcome a certain unpleasant feeling when, having crossed the threshold of the palace of justice, they find themselves in presence of a judge. More than almost any one else, Maxence was likely to be accessible to that vague and inexplicable feeling; and it was with an effort that he answered,

“On Saturday evening, the Baron de Thaller called at our house a few minutes before the commissary. After loading my father with reproaches, he invited him to leave the country; and, in order to facilitate his flight, he handed him these fifteen thousand francs. My father declined to accept them; and, at the moment of parting, he recommended to me particularly to return them to M. de Thaller. I thought it best to return them to you, sir.”

“Why?”

“Because I wished the fact known to you of the money having been offered and refused.”

M. Barban d’Avranchel was quietly stroking his whiskers, once of a bright red, but now almost entirely white.

“Is this an insinuation against the manager of the Mutual Credit?” he asked.

Maxence looked straight at him; and, in a tone which affirmed precisely the reverse,

“I accuse no one,” he said.

“I must tell you,” resumed the judge, “that M. de Thaller has himself informed me of this circumstance. When he called at your house, he was ignorant, as yet, of the extent of the embezzlements, and was in hopes of being able to hush up the affair. That’s why he wished his cashier to start for Belgium. This system of helping criminals to escape the just punishment of their crimes is to be bitterly deplored; but it is quite the habit of your financial magnates, who prefer sending some poor devil of an employe to hang himself abroad than run the risk of compromising their credit by confessing that they have been robbed.”

Maxence might have had a great deal to say; but M. de Tregars had recommended him the most extreme reserve. He remained silent.

“On the other hand,” resumed the judge, “the refusal to accept the money so generously offered does not speak in favor of Vincent Favoral. He was well aware, when he left, that it would require a great deal of money to reach the frontier, escape pursuit, and hide himself abroad; and, if he refused the fifteen thousand francs, it must have been because he was well provided for already.”

Tears of shame and rage started from Maxence’s eyes. “I am certain, sir,” he exclaimed, “that my father went off without a sou.”

“What has become of the millions, then?” he asked coldly.

Maxence hesitated. Why not mention his suspicions? He dared not.

“My father speculated at the bourse,” he stammered. “And he led a scandalous conduct, keeping up, away from home, a style of living which must have absorbed immense sums.”

“We knew nothing of it, sir; and our first suspicions were aroused by what the commissary of police told us.”

The judge insisted no more; and in a tone which indicated that his question was a mere matter of form, and he attached but little importance to the answer,

“You have no news from your father?” he asked.

“None whatever.”

“And you have no idea where he has gone?”

“None in the least.”

M. d’Avranchel had already resumed his seat at the table, and was again busy with his papers.

“You may retire,” he said. “You will be notified if I need you.”

Maxence felt much discouraged when he joined M. de Tregars at the entrance of the gallery.

“The judge is convinced of M. de Thaller’s entire innocence,” he said.

But as soon as he had narrated, with a fidelity that did honor to his memory, all that had just occurred,

“Nothing is lost yet,” declared M. de Tregars. And, taking from his pocket the bill for two trunks, which had been found in M. Favoral’s portfolio,

“There,” he said, “we shall know our fate.”

IV

M. de Tregars and Maxence were in luck. They had a good driver and a fair horse; and in twenty minutes they were at the trunk store. As soon as the cab stopped,

“Well,” exclaimed M. de Tregars, “I suppose it has to be done.”

And, with the look of a man who has made up his mind to do something which is extremely repugnant to him, he jumped out, and, followed by Maxence, entered the shop.

It was a modest establishment; and the people who kept it, husband and wife, seeing two customers coming in, rushed to meet them, with that welcoming smile which blossoms upon the lips of every Parisian shopkeeper.

“What will you have, gentlemen?”

And, with wonderful volubility, they went on enumerating every article which they had for sale in their shop,--from the “indispensable-necessary,” containing seventy-seven pieces of solid silver, and costing four thousand francs, down to the humblest carpet-bag at thirty-nine cents.

But Marius de Tregars interrupted them as soon as he could get an opportunity, and, showing them their bill,

“It was here, wasn’t it,” he inquired, “that the two trunks were bought which are charged in this bill?”

“Yes, sir,” answered simultaneously both husband and wife.

“When were they delivered?”

“Our porter went to deliver them, less than two hours after they were bought.”

“Where?”

By this time the shopkeepers were beginning to exchange uneasy looks.

“Why do you ask?” inquired the woman in a tone which indicated that she had the settled intention not to answer, unless for good and valid reason.

To obtain the simplest information is not always as easy as might be supposed. The suspicion of the Parisian tradesman is easily aroused; and, as his head is stuffed with stories of spies and robbers, as soon as he is questioned he becomes as dumb as an oyster.

But M. de Tregars had foreseen the difficulty:

“I beg you to believe, madame,” he went on, “that my questions are not dictated by an idle curiosity. Here are the facts. A relative of ours, a man of a certain age, of whom we are very fond, and whose head is a little weak, left his home some forty-eight hours since. We are looking for him, and we are in hopes, if we find these trunks, to find him at the same time.”

With furtive glances, the husband and wife were tacitly consulting each other.

“The fact is,” they said, “we wouldn’t like, under any consideration, to commit an indiscretion which might result to the prejudice of a customer.”

“Fear nothing,” said M. de Tregars with a reassuring gesture. “If we have not had recourse to the police, it’s because, you know, it isn’t pleasant to have the police interfere in one’s affairs. If you have any objections to answer me, however, I must, of course, apply to the commissary.”

The argument proved decisive.

“If that’s the case,” replied the woman, “I am ready to tell all I know.”

“Well, then, madame, what do you know?”

“These two trunks were bought on Friday afternoon last, by a man of a certain age, tall, very thin, with a stern countenance, and wearing a long frock coat.”

“No more doubt,” murmured Maxence. “It was he.”

“And now,” the woman went on, “that you have just told me that your relative was a little weak in the head, I remember that this gentleman had a strange sort of way about him, and that he kept walking about the store as if he had fleas on his legs. And awful particular he was too! Nothing was handsome enough and strong enough for him; and he was anxious about the safety-locks, as he had, he said, many objects of value, papers, and securities, to put away.”

“And where did he tell you to send the two trunks?”

“Rue du Cirque, to Mme.--wait a minute, I have the name at the end of my tongue.”

“You must have it on your books, too,” remarked M. de Tregars.

The husband was already looking over his blotter.

“April 26, 1872,” he said. “26, here it is: ‘Two leather trunks, patent safety-locks: Mme. Zelie Cadelle, 49 Rue du Cirque.’”

Without too much affectation, M. de Tregars had drawn near to the shopkeeper, and was looking over his shoulder.

“What is that,” he asked, “written there, below the address?”

“That, sir, is the direction left by the customer ‘Mark on each end of the trunks, in large letters, “Rio de Janeiro.”’”

Maxence could not suppress an exclamation. “Oh!”

But the tradesman mistook him; and, seizing this magnificent opportunity to display his knowledge,

“Rio de Janeiro is the capital of Brazil,” he said in a tone of importance. “And your relative evidently intended to go there; and, if he has not changed his mind, I doubt whether you can overtake him; for the Brazilian steamer was to have sailed yesterday from Havre.”

Whatever may have been his intentions, M. de Tregars remained perfectly calm.

“If that’s the case,” he said to the shopkeepers, “I think I had better give up the chase. I am much obliged to you, however, for your information.”

But, once out again,

“Do you really believe,” inquired Maxence, “that my father has left France?”

M. de Tregars shook his head.

“I will give you my opinion,” he uttered, “after I have investigated matters in the Rue du Cirque.”

They drove there in a few minutes; and, the cab having stopped at the entrance of the street, they walked on foot in front of No. 49. It was a small cottage, only one story in height, built between a sanded court-yard and a garden, whose tall trees showed above the roof. At the windows could be seen curtains of light-colored silk, --a sure indication of the presence of a young and pretty woman.

For a few minutes Marius de Tregars remained in observation; but, as nothing stirred,

“We must find out something, somehow,” he exclaimed impatiently.

And noticing a large grocery store bearing No. 62, he directed his steps towards it, still accompanied by Maxence.

It was the hour of the day when customers are rare. Standing in the centre of the shop, the grocer, a big fat man with an air of importance, was overseeing his men, who were busy putting things in order.

M. de Tregars took him aside, and with an accent of mystery,

“I am,” he said, “a clerk with M. Drayton, the jeweler in the Rue de la Paix; and I come to ask you one of those little favors which tradespeople owe to each other.”

A frown appeared on the fat man’s countenance. He thought, perhaps, that M. Drayton’s clerks were rather too stylish-looking; or else, perhaps, he felt apprehensive of one of those numerous petty swindles of which shopkeepers are constantly the victims.

“What is it?” said he. “Speak!”

“I am on my way,” spoke M. de Tregars, “to deliver a ring which a lady purchased of us yesterday. She is not a regular customer, and has given us no references. If she doesn’t pay, shall I leave the ring? My employer told me, ‘Consult some prominent tradesman of the neighborhood, and follow his advice.’”

Prominent tradesman! Delicately tickled vanity was dancing in the grocer’s eyes.

“What is the name of the lady?” he inquired.

“Mme. Zelie Cadelle.”

The grocer burst out laughing.

“In that case, my boy,” he said, tapping familiarly the shoulder of the so-called clerk, “whether she pays or not, you can deliver the article.”

The familiarity was not, perhaps, very much to the taste of the Marquis de Tregars. No matter.

“She is rich, then, that lady?” he said.

“Personally no. But she is protected by an old fool, who allows her all her fancies.”

“Indeed!”

“It is scandalous; and you cannot form an idea of the amount of money that is spent in that house. Horses, carriages, servants, dresses, balls, dinners, card-playing all night, a perpetual carnival: it must be ruinous!”

M. de Tregars never winced.

“And the old man who pays?” he asked; “do you know him?”

“I have seen him pass,--a tall, lean, old fellow, who doesn’t look very rich, either. But excuse me: here is a customer I must wait upon.”

Having walked out into the street,

“We must separate now,” declared M. de Tregars to Maxence.

“What! You wish to--”

“Go and wait for me in that cafe yonder, at the corner of the street. I must see that Zelie Cadelle and speak to her.”

And without suffering an objection on the part of Maxence, he walked resolutely up to the cottage-gate, and rang vigorously.

At the sound of the bell, one of those servants stepped out into the yard, who seem manufactured on purpose, heaven knows where, for the special service of young ladies who keep house,--a tall rascal with sallow complexion and straight hair, a cynical eye, and a low, impudent smile.

“What do you wish, sir?” he inquired through the grating.

“That you should open the door, first,” uttered M. de Tregars, with such a look and such an accent, that the other obeyed at once.

“And now,” he added, “go and announce me to Mme. Zelie Cadelle.”

“Madame is out,” replied the valet.

And noticing that M. de Tregars shrugged his shoulders,

“Upon my word,” he said, “she has gone to the bois with one of her friends. If you won’t believe me, ask my comrades there.”

And he pointed out two other servants of the same pattern as himself, who were silting at a table in the carriage-house, playing cards, and drinking.

But M. de Tregars did not mean to be imposed upon. He felt certain that the man was lying. Instead, therefore, of discussing,

“I want you to take me to your mistress,” he ordered, in a tone that admitted of no objection; “or else I’ll find my way to her alone.”

It was evident that he would do just as he said, by force if needs be. The valet saw this, and, after hesitating a moment longer,

“Come along, then,” he said, “since you insist so much. We’ll talk to the chambermaid.”

And, having led M. de Tregars into the vestibule, he called out, “Mam’selle Amanda!”

A woman at once made her appearance who was a worthy mate for the valet. She must have been about forty, and the most alarming duplicity could be read upon her features, deeply pitted by the small-pox. She wore a pretentious dress, an apron like a stage-servant, and a cap profusely decorated with flowers and ribbons.

“Here is a gentleman,” said the valet, “who insists upon seeing madame. You fix it with him.”

Better than her fellow servant, Mlle. Amanda could judge with whom she had to deal. A single glance at this obstinate visitor convinced her that he was not one who can be easily turned off.

Putting on, therefore, her pleasantest smile, thus displaying at the same time her decayed teeth,

“The fact is that monsieur will very much disturb madame,” she observed.

“I shall excuse myself.”

“But I’ll be scolded.”

Instead of answering, M. de Tregars took a couple of twenty-franc-notes out of his pocket, and slipped them into her hand.

“Please follow me to the parlor, then,” she said with a heavy sigh.

M. de Tregars did so, whilst observing everything around him with the attentive perspicacity of a deputy sheriff preparing to make out an inventory.

Being double, the house was much more spacious than could have been thought from the street, and arranged with that science of comfort which is the genius of modern architects.

The most lavish luxury was displayed on all sides; not that solid, quiet, and harmonious luxury which is the result of long years of opulence, but the coarse, loud, and superficial luxury of the _parvenu_, who is eager to enjoy quick, and to possess all that he has craved from others.

The vestibule was a folly, with its exotic plants climbing along crystal trellises, and its Sevres and China jardinieres filled with gigantic azaleas. And along the gilt railing of the stairs marble and bronze statuary was intermingled with masses of growing flowers.

“It must take twenty thousand francs a year to keep up this conservatory alone,” thought M. de Tregars.

Meantime the old chambermaid opened a satinwood door with silver lock.

“That’s the parlor,” she said. “Take a seat whilst I go and tell madame.”

In this parlor everything had been combined to dazzle. Furniture, carpets, hangings, every thing, was rich, too rich, furiously, incontestably, obviously rich. The chandelier was a masterpiece, the clock an original and unique piece of work. The pictures hanging upon the wall were all signed with the most famous names.

“To judge of the rest by what I have seen,” thought M. de Tregars, “there must have been at least four or five hundred thousand francs spent on this house.”

And, although he was shocked by a quantity of details which betrayed the most absolute lack of taste, he could hardly persuade himself that the cashier of the Mutual Credit could be the master of this sumptuous dwelling; and he was asking himself whether he had not followed the wrong scent, when a circumstance came to put an end to all his doubts.

Upon the mantlepiece, in a small velvet frame, was Vincent Favoral’s portrait.

M. de Tregars had been seated for a few minutes, and was collecting his somewhat scattered thoughts, when a slight grating sound, and a rustling noise, made him turn around.

Mme. Zelie Cadelle was coming in.

She was a woman of some twenty-five or six, rather tall, lithe, and well made. Her face was pale and worn; and her heavy dark hair was scattered over her neck and shoulders. She looked at once sarcastic and good-natured, impudent and naive, with her sparkling eyes, her turned-up nose, and wide mouth furnished with teeth, sound and white, like those of a young dog. She had wasted no time upon her dress; for she wore a plain blue cashmere wrapper, fastened at the waist with a sort of silk scarf of similar color.

From the very threshold,

“Dear me!” she exclaimed, “how very singular!”

M. de Tregars stepped forward.

“What?” he inquired.

“Oh, nothing!” she replied,--“nothing at all!”

And without ceasing to look at him with a wondering eye, but suddenly changing her tone of voice,

“And so, sir,” she said, “my servants have been unable to keep you from forcing yourself into my house!”

“I hope, madame,” said M. de Tregars with a polite bow, “that you will excuse my persistence. I come for a matter which can suffer no delay.”

She was still looking at him obstinately. “Who are you?” she asked.

“My name will not afford you any information. I am the Marquis de Tregars.”

“Tregars!” she repeated, looking up at the ceiling, as if in search of an inspiration. “Tregars! Never heard of it!”

And throwing herself into an arm chair,

“Well, sir, what do you wish with me, then? Speak!”

He had taken a seat near her, and kept his eyes riveted upon hers.

“I have come, madame,” he replied, “to ask you to put me in the way to see and speak to the man whose photograph is there on the mantlepiece.”

He expected to take her by surprise, and that by a shudder, a cry, a gesture, she might betray her secret. Not at all.

“Are you, then, one of M. Vincent’s friends?” she asked quietly.

M. de Tregars understood, and this was subsequently confirmed, that it was under his Christian name of Vincent alone, that the cashier of the Mutual Credit was known in the Rue du Cirque.

“Yes, I am a friend of his,” he replied; “and if I could see him, I could probably render him an important service.”

“Well, you are too late.”

“Why?”

“Because M. Vincent put off more than twenty-four hours since?”

“Are you sure of that?”

“As sure as a person can be who went to the railway station yesterday with him and all his baggage.”

“You saw him leave?”

“As I see you.”

“Where was he going?”

“To Havre, to take the steamer for Brazil, which was to sail on the same day; so that, by this time, he must be awfully seasick.”

“And you really think that it was his intention to go to Brazil?”

“He said so. It was written on his thirty-six trunks in letters half a foot high. Besides, he showed me his ticket.”

“Have you any idea what could have induced him to expatriate himself thus, at his age?”

“He told me he had spent all his money, and also some of other people’s; that he was afraid of being arrested; and that he was going yonder to be quiet, and try to make another fortune.”

Was Mme. Zelie speaking in good faith? To ask the question would have been rather naive; but an effort might be made to find out. Carefully concealing his own impressions, and the importance he attached to this conversation,

“I pity you sincerely, madame,” resumed M. de Tregars; “for you must be sorely grieved by this sudden departure.”

“Me!” she said in a voice that came from the heart. “I don’t care a straw.”

Marquis de Tregars knew well enough the ladies of the class to which he supposed that Mme. Zelie Cadelle must belong, not to be surprised at this frank declaration.

“And yet,” he said, “you are indebted to him for the princely magnificence that surrounds you here.”

“Of course.”

“He being gone, as you say, will you be able to keep up your style of living?”

Half raising herself from her seat,

“I haven’t the slightest idea of doing so,” she exclaimed. “Never in the whole world have I had such a stupid time as for the last five months that I have spent in this gilded cage. What a bore, my beloved brethren! I am yawning still at the mere thought of the number of times I have yawned in it.”

M. de Tregars’ gesture of surprise was the more natural, that his surprise was immense.

“You are tired being here?” he said.

“To death.”

“And you have only been here five months?”

“Dear me; yes! and by the merest chance, too, you’ll see. One day at the beginning of last December, I was coming from--but no matter where I was coming from. At any rate, I hadn’t a cent in my pocket, and nothing but an old calico dress on my back; and I was going along, not in the best of humor, as you may imagine, when I feel that some one is following me. Without looking around, and from the corner of my eye, I look over my shoulder, and I see a respectable-looking old gentleman, wearing a long frock-coat.”

“M. Vincent?”

“In his own natural person, and who was walking, walking. I quietly begin to walk slower; and, as soon as we come to a place where there was hardly any one, he comes up alongside of me.”

Something comical must have happened at this moment, which Mme. Zelie Cadelle said nothing about; for she was laughing most heartily, --a frank and sonorous laughter.

“Then,” she resumed, “he begins at once to explain that I remind him of a person whom he loved tenderly, and whom he has just had the misfortune to lose, adding, that he would deem himself the happiest of men if I would allow him to take care of me, and insure me a brilliant position.”

“You see! That rascally Vincent!” said M. de Tregars, just to be saying something.

Mme. Zelie shook her head.

“You know him,” she resumed. “He is not young; he is not handsome; he is not funny. I did not fancy him one bit; and, if I had only known where to find shelter for the night, I’d soon have sent him to the old Nick,--him and his brilliant position. But, not having enough money to buy myself a penny-loaf, it wasn’t the time to put on any airs. So I tell him that I accept. He goes for a cab; we get into it; and he brings me right straight here.”

Positively M. de Tregars required his entire self-control to conceal the intensity of his curiosity.

“Was this house, then, already as it is now?” he interrogated.

“Precisely, except that there were no servants in it, except the chambermaid Amanda, who is M. Favoral’s confidante. All the others had been dismissed; and it was a hostler from a stable near by who came to take care of the horses.”

“And what then?”

“Then you may imagine what I looked like in the midst of all this magnificence, with my old shoes and my fourpenny skirt. Something like a grease-spot on a satin dress. M. Vincent seemed delighted, nevertheless. He had sent Amanda out to get me some under-clothing and a ready-made wrapper; and, whilst waiting, he took me all through the house, from the cellar to the garret, saying that everything was at my command, and that the next day I would have a battalion of servants to wait on me.”

It was evidently with perfect frankness that she was speaking, and with the pleasure one feels in telling an extraordinary adventure. But suddenly she stopped short, as if discovering that she was forgetting herself, and going farther than was proper.

And it was only after a moment of reflection that she went on,

“It was like fairyland to me. I had never tasted the opulence of the great, you see, and I had never had any money except that which I earned. So, during the first days, I did nothing but run up and down stairs, admiring everything, feeling everything with my own hands, and looking at myself in the glass to make sure that I was not dreaming. I rang the bell just to make the servants come up; I spent hours trying dresses; then I’d have the horses put to the carriage, and either ride to the bois, or go out shopping. M. Vincent gave me as much money as I wanted; and it seemed as though I never spent enough. I shout, I was like a mad woman.”

A cloud appeared upon Mme. Zelie’s countenance, and, changing suddenly her tone and her manner,

“Unfortunately,” she went on, “one gets tired of every thing. At the end of two weeks I knew the house from top to bottom, and after a month I was sick of the whole thing; so that one night I began dressing.

“‘Where do you want to go?’ Amanda asked me. ‘Why, to Mabille, to dance a quadrille, or two.’ ‘Impossible!’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because M. Vincent does not wish you to go out at night.’ ‘We’ll see about that!’

“The next day, I tell all this to M. Vincent; and he says that Amanda is right; that it is not proper for a woman in my position to frequent balls; and that, if I want to go out at night, I can stay. Get out! I tell you what, if it hadn’t been for the fine carriage, and all that, I would have cleared out that minute. Any way, I became disgusted from that moment, and have been more and more ever since; and, if M. Vincent had not himself left, I certainly would.”

“To go where?”

“Anywhere. Look here, now! do you suppose I need a man to support me! No, thank Heaven! Little Zelie, here present, has only to apply to any dressmaker, and she’ll be glad to give her four francs a day to run the machine. And she’ll be free, at least; and she can laugh and dance as much as she likes.”

M. de Tregars had made a mistake: he had just discovered it.

Mme. Zelie Cadelle was certainly not particularly virtuous; but she was far from being the woman he expected to meet.

“At any rate,” he said, “you did well to wait patiently.”

“I do not regret it.”

“If you can keep this house--”

She interrupted him with a great burst of laughter.

“This house!” she exclaimed. “Why, it was sold long ago, with every thing in it,--furniture, horses, carriages, every thing except me. A young gentleman, very well dressed, bought it for a tall girl, who looks like a goose, and has far over a thousand francs of red hair on her head.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Sure as I live, having seen with my own eyes the young swell and his red-headed friend counting heaps of bank-notes to M. Vincent. They are to move in day after to-morrow; and they have invited me to the house-warming. But no more of it for me, I thank you! I am sick and tired of all these people. And the proof of it is, I am busy packing my things; and lots of them I have too,--dresses, underclothes, jewelry. He was a good-natured fellow, old Vincent was, anyhow. He gave me money enough to buy some furniture. I have hired a small apartment; and I am going to set up dress-making on my own hook. And won’t we laugh then! and won’t we have some fun to make up for lost time! Come, my children, take your places for a quadrille. Forward two!”

And, bouncing out of her chair, she began sketching out one of those bold cancan steps which astound the policemen on duty in the ball-rooms.

“Bravo!” said M. de Tregars, forcing himself to smile,--“bravo!”

He saw clearly now what sort of woman was Mme. Zelie Cadelle; how he should speak to her, and what cords he might yet cause to vibrate within her. He recognized the true daughter of Paris, wayward and nervous, who in the midst of her disorders preserves an instinctive pride; who places her independence far above all the money in the world; who gives, rather than sells, herself; who knows no law but her caprice, no morality but the policeman, no religion but pleasure.

As soon as she had returned to her seat,

“There you are dancing gayly,” he said, “and poor Vincent is doubtless groaning at this moment over his separation from you.”

“Ah! I’d pity him if I had time,” she said.

“He was fond of you?”

“Don’t speak of it.”

“If he had not been fond of you, he would not have put you here.”

Mme. Zelie made a little face of equivocal meaning.

“What proof is that?” she murmured.

“He would not have spent so much money for you.”

“For me!” she interrupted,--“for me! What have I cost him of any consequence? Is it for me that he bought, furnished, and fitted out this house? No, no! He had the cage; and he put in the bird, --the first he happened to find. He brought me here as he might have brought any other woman, young or old, pretty or ugly, blonde or brunette. As to what I spent here, it was a mere bagatelle compared with what the other did,--the one before me. Amanda kept telling me all the time I was a fool. You may believe me, then, when I tell you that M. Vincent will not wet many handkerchiefs with the tears he’ll shed over me.”

“But do you know what became of the one before you, as you call her, --whether she is alive or dead, and owing to what circumstances the cage became empty?”

But, instead of answering, Mme. Zelie was fixing upon Marius de Tregars a suspicious glance. And, after a moment only,

“Why do you ask me that?” she said.

“I would like to know.”

She did not permit him to proceed. Rising from her seat, and stepping briskly up to him,

“Do you belong to the police, by chance?” she asked in a tone of mistrust.

If she was anxious, it was evidently because she had motives of anxiety which she had concealed. If, two or three times she had interrupted herself, it was because, manifestly, she had a secret to keep. If the idea of police had come into her mind, it is because, very probably, they had recommended her to be on her guard.

M. de Tregars understood all this, and, also, that he had tried to go too fast.

“Do I look like a secret police-agent?” he asked.

She was examining him with all her power of penetration.

“Not at all, I confess,” she replied. “But, if you are not one, how is it that you come to my house, without knowing me from this side of sole leather, to ask me a whole lot of questions, which I am fool enough to answer?”

“I told you I was a friend of M. Favoral.”

“Who’s that Favoral?”

“That’s M. Vincent’s real name, madame.”

She opened her eyes wide.

“You must be mistaken. I never heard him called any thing but Vincent.”

“It is because he had especial motives for concealing his personality. The money he spent here did not belong to him: he took it, he stole it, from the Mutual Credit Company where he was cashier, and where he left a deficit of twelve millions.”

Mme. Zelie stepped back as though she had trodden on a snake.

“It’s impossible!” she cried.

“It is the exact truth. Haven’t you seen in the papers the case of Vincent Favoral, cashier of the Mutual Credit?”

And, taking a paper from his pocket, he handed it to the young woman, saying, “Read.”

But she pushed it back, not without a slight blush. “Oh, I believe you!” she said.

The fact is, and Marius understood it, she did not read very fluently.

“The worst of M. Vincent Favoral’s conduct,” he resumed, “is, that, while he was throwing away money here by the handful, he subjected his family to the most cruel privations.”

“Oh!”

“He refused the necessaries of life to his wife, the best and the worthiest of women; he never gave a cent to his son; and he deprived his daughter of every thing.”

“Ah, if I could have suspected such a thing!” murmured Mme. Zelie.

“Finally, and to cap the--climax, he has gone, leaving his wife and children literally without bread.”

Transported with indignation,

“Why, that man must have been a horrible old scoundrel!” exclaimed the young woman.

This is just the point to which M. de Tregars wished to bring her.

“And now,” he resumed, “you must understand the enormous interest we have in knowing what has become of him.”

“I have already told you.”

M. de Tregars had risen, in his turn. Taking Mme. Zelie’s hands, and fixing upon her one of those acute looks, which search for the truth down to the innermost recesses of the conscience,

“Come, my dear child,” he began in a penetrating voice, “you are a worthy and honest girl. Will you leave in the most frightful despair a family who appeal to your heart? Be sure that no harm will ever happen through us to Vincent Favoral.”

She raised her hand, as they do to take an oath in a court of justice, and, in a solemn tone,

“I swear,” she uttered, “that I went to the station with M. Vincent; that he assured me that he was going to Brazil; that he had his passage-ticket; and that all his baggage was marked, ‘Rio de Janeiro.’”

The disappointment was great: and M. de Tregars manifested it by a gesture.

“At least,” he insisted, “tell me who the woman was whose place you took here.”

But already had the young woman returned to her feeling of mistrust.

“How in the world do you expect me to know?” she replied. “Go and ask Amanda. I have no accounts to give you. Besides, I have to go and finish packing my trunks. So good-by, and enjoy yourself.”

And she went out so quick, that she caught Amanda, the chambermaid, kneeling behind the door.

“So that woman was listening,” thought M. de Tregars, anxious and dissatisfied.

But it was in vain that he begged Mme. Zelie to return, and to hear a single word more. She disappeared; and he had to resign himself to leave the house without learning any thing more for the present.

He had remained there very long; and he was wondering, as he walked out, whether Maxence had not got tired waiting for him in the little cafe where he had sent him.

But Maxence had remained faithfully at his post. And when Marius de Tregars came to sit by him, whilst exclaiming, “Here you are at last!” he called his attention at the same time with a gesture, and a wink from the corner of his eye, to two men sitting at the adjoining table before a bowl of punch.

Certain, now, that M. de Tregars would remain on the lookout, Maxence was knocking on the table with his fist, to call the waiter, who was busy playing billiards with a customer.

And when he came at last, justly annoyed at being disturbed,

“Give us two mugs of beer,” Maxence ordered, “and bring us a pack of cards.”

M. de Tregars understood very well that something extraordinary had happened; but, unable to guess what, he leaned over towards his companion.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“We must hear what these two men are saying; and we’ll play a game of piquet for a subterfuge.”

The waiter returned, bringing two glasses of a muddy liquid, a piece of cloth, the color of which was concealed under a layer of dirt, and a pack of cards horribly soft and greasy.

“My deal,” said Maxence.

And he began shuffling, and giving the cards, whilst M. de Tregars was examining the punch-drinkers at the next table.

In one of the two, a man still young, wearing a striped vest with alpaca sleeves, he thought he recognized one of the rascally-looking fellows he had caught a glimpse of in Mme. Zelie Cadelle’s carriage-house.

The other, an old man, whose inflamed complexion and blossoming nose betrayed old habits of drunkenness, looked very much like a coachman out of place. Baseness and duplicity bloomed upon his countenance; and the brightness of his small eyes rendered still more alarming the slyly obsequious smile that was stereotyped upon his thin and pale lips.

They were so completely absorbed in their conversation, that they paid no attention whatever to what was going on around them.

“Then,” the old one was saying, “it’s all over.”

“Entirely. The house is sold.”

“And the boss?”

“Gone to America.”

“What! Suddenly, that way?”

“No. We supposed he was going on some journey, because, every day since the beginning of the week, they were bringing in trunks and boxes; but no one knew exactly when he would go. Now, in the night of Saturday to Sunday, he drops in the house like a bombshell, wakes up everybody, and says he must leave immediately. At once we harness up, we load the baggage up, we drive him to the Western Railway Station, and good-by, Vincent!”

“And the young lady?”

“She’s got to get out in the next twenty-four hours; but she don’t seem to mind it one bit. The fact is we are the ones who grieve the most, after all.”

“Is it possible?”

“It is so. She was a good girl; and we won’t soon find one like her.”

The old man seemed distressed.

“Bad luck!” he growled. “I would have liked that house myself.”

“Oh, I dare say you would!”

“And there is no way to get in?”

“Can’t tell. It will be well to see the others, those who have bought. But I mistrust them: they look too stupid not to be mean.”

Listening intently to the conversation of these two men, it was mechanically and at random that M. de Tregars and Maxence threw their cards on the table, and uttered the common terms of the game of piquet,

“Five cards! Tierce, major! Three aces.”

Meantime the old man was going on,

“Who knows but what M. Vincent may come back?”

“No danger of that!”

“Why?”

The other looked carefully around, and, seeing only two players absorbed in their game,

“Because,” he replied, “M. Vincent is completely ruined, it seems. He spent all his money, and a good deal of other people’s money besides. Amanda, the chambermaid, told me; and I guess she knows.”

“You thought he was so rich!”

“He was. But no matter how big a bag is: if you keep taking out of it, you must get to the bottom.”

“Then he spent a great deal?”

“It’s incredible! I have been in extravagant houses; but nowhere have I ever seen money fly as it has during the five months that I have been in that house. A regular pillage! Everybody helped themselves; and what was not in the house, they could get from the tradespeople, have it charged on the bill; and it was all paid without a word.”

“Then, yes, indeed, the money must have gone pretty lively,” said the old one in a convinced tone.

“Well,” replied the other, “that was nothing yet. Amanda the chambermaid who has been in the house fifteen years, told us some stories that would make you jump. She was not much for spending, Zelie; but some of the others, it seems . . .”

It required the greatest effort on the part of Maxence and M. de Tregars not to play, but only to pretend to play, and to continue to count imaginary points,--“One, two, three, four.”

Fortunately the coachman with the red nose seemed much interested.

“What others?” he asked.

“That I don’t know any thing about,” replied the younger valet. “But you may imagine that there must have been more than one in that little house during the many years that M. Vincent owned it,--a man who hadn’t his equal for women, and who was worth millions.”

“And what was his business?”

“Don’t know that, either.”

“What! there were ten of you in the house, and you didn’t know the profession of the man who paid you all?”

“We were all new.”

“The chambermaid, Amanda, must have known.”

“When she was asked, she said that he was a merchant. One thing is sure, he was a queer old chap.”

So interested was the old coachman, that, seeing the punch-bowl empty, he called for another. His comrade could not fail to show his appreciation of such politeness.

“Ah, yes!” he went on, “old Vincent was an eccentric fellow; and never, to see him, could you have suspected that he cut up such capers, and that he threw money away by the handful.”

“Indeed!”

“Imagine a man about fifty years old, stiff as a post, with a face about as pleasant as a prison-gate. That’s the boss! Summer and winter, he wore laced shoes, blue stockings, gray pantaloons that were too short, a cotton necktie, and a frock-coat that came down to his ankles. In the street, you would have taken him for a hosier who had retired before his fortune was made.”

“You don’t say so!”

“No, never have I seen a man look so much like an old miser. You think, perhaps, that he came in a carriage. Not a bit of it! He came in the omnibus, my boy, and outside too, for three sous; and when it rained he opened his umbrella. But the moment he had crossed the threshold of the house, presto, pass! complete change of scene. The miser became pacha. He took off his old duds, put on a blue velvet robe; and then there was nothing handsome enough, nothing good enough, nothing expensive enough for him. And, when he had acted the my lord to his heart’s content, he put on his old traps again, resumed his prison-gate face, climbed up on top of the omnibus, and went off as he came.”

“And you were not surprised, all of you, at such a life?”

“Very much so.”

“And you did not think that these singular whims must conceal something?”

“Oh, but we did!”

“And you didn’t try to find out what that something was?”

“How could we?”

“Was it very difficult to follow your boss, and ascertain where he went, after leaving the house?”

“Certainly not; but what then?”

“Why,” he replied, “you would have found out his secret in the end; and then you would have gone to him and told him, ‘Give me so much, or I peach.’”

V

This story of M. Vincent, as told by these two honest companions, was something like the vulgar legend of other people’s money, so eagerly craved, and so madly dissipated. Easily-gotten wealth is easily gotten rid of. Stolen money has fatal tendencies, and turns irresistibly to gambling, horse-jockeys, fast women, all the ruinous fancies, all the unwholesome gratifications.

They are rare indeed, among the daring cut-throats of speculation, those to whom their ill-gotten gain proves of real service,--so rare, that they are pointed out, and are as easily numbered as the girls who leap some night from the street to a ten-thousand-franc apartment, and manage to remain there.

Seized with the intoxication of sudden wealth, they lose all measure and all prudence. Whether they believe their luck inexhaustible, or fear a sudden turn of fortune, they make haste to enjoy themselves, and they fill the noted restaurants, the leading cafes, the theatres, the clubs, the race-courses, with their impudent personality, the clash of their voice, the extravagance of their mistresses, the noise of their expenses, and the absurdity of their vanity. And they go on and on, lavishing other people’s money, until the fatal hour of one of those disastrous liquidations which terrify the courts and the exchange, and cause pallid faces and a gnashing of teeth in the “street,” until the moment when they have the choice between a pistol-shot, which they never choose, the criminal court, which they do their best to avoid, and a trip abroad.

What becomes of them afterwards? To what gutters do they tumble from fall to fall? Does any one know what becomes of the women who disappear suddenly after two or three years of follies and of splendors?

But it happens sometimes, as you step out of a carriage in front of some theatre, that you wonder where you have already seen the face of the wretched beggar who opens the door for you, and in a husky voice claims his two sous. You saw him at the Cafe Riche, during the six months that he was a big financier.

Some other time you may catch, in the crowd, snatches of a strange conversation between two crapulous rascals.

“It was at the time,” says one, “when I drove that bright chestnut team that I had bought for twenty thousand francs of the eldest son of the Duke de Sermeuse.”

“I remember,” replies the other; “for at that moment I gave six thousand francs a month to little Cabriole of the Varieties.”

And, improbable as this may seem, it is the exact truth; for one was manager of a manufacturing enterprise that sank ten millions; and the other was at the head of a financial operation that ruined five hundred families. They had houses like the one in the Rue du Cirque, mistresses more expensive than Mme. Zelie Cadelle, and servants like those who were now talking within a step of Maxence and Marius de Tregars. The latter had resumed their conversation; and the oldest one, the coachman with the red nose, was saying to his younger comrade,

“This Vincent affair must be a lesson to you. If ever you find yourself again in a house where so much money is spent, remember that it hasn’t cost much trouble to make it, and manage somehow to get as big a share of it as you can.”

“That’s what I’ve always done wherever I have been.”

“And, above all, make haste to fill your bag, because, you see, in houses like that, one is never sure, one day, whether, the next, the gentleman will not be at Mazas, and the lady at St. Lazares.”

They had done their second bowl of punch, and finished their conversation. They paid, and left.

And Maxence and M. de Tregars were able, at last, to throw down their cards.

Maxence was very pale; and big tears were rolling down his cheeks.

“What disgrace!” he murmured: “This, then, is the other side of my father’s existence! This is the way in which he spent the millions which he stole; whilst, in the Rue St. Gilles, he deprived his family of the necessaries of life!”

And, in a tone of utter discouragement,

“Now it is indeed all over, and it is useless to continue our search. My father is certainly guilty.”

But M. de Tregars was not the man thus to give up the game.

“Guilty? Yes,” he said, “but dupe also.”

“Whose dupe?”

“That’s what we’ll find out, you may depend upon it.”

“What! after what we have just heard?”

“I have more hope than ever.”

“Did you learn any thing from Mme. Zelie Cadelle, then?”

“Nothing more than you know by those two rascals’ conversation.”

A dozen questions were pressing upon Maxence’s lips; but M. de Tregars interrupted him.

“In this case, my friend, less than ever must we trust appearances. Let me speak. Was your father a simpleton? No! His ability to dissimulate, for years, his double existence, proves, on the contrary, a wonderful amount of duplicity. How is it, then, that latterly his conduct has been so extraordinary and so absurd? But you will doubtless say it was always such. In that case, I answer you, No; for then his secret could not have been kept for a year. We hear that other women lived in that house before Mme. Zelie Cadelle. But who were they? What has become of them? Is there any certainty that they have ever existed? Nothing proves it.

“The servants having been all changed, Amanda, the chambermaid, is the only one who knows the truth; and she will be very careful to say nothing about it. Therefore, all our positive information goes back no farther than five months. And what do we hear? That your father seemed to try and make his extravagant expenditures as conspicuous as possible. That he did not even take the trouble to conceal the source of the money he spent so profusely; for he told Mme. Zelie that he was at the end of his tether, and that, after having spent his own fortune, he was spending other people’s money. He had announced his intended departure; he had sold the house, and received its price. Finally, at the last moment, what does he do?

“Instead of going off quietly and secretly, like a man who is running away, and who knows that he is pursued, he tells every one where he intends to go; he writes it on all his trunks, in letters half a foot high; and then rides in great display to the railway station, with a woman, several carriages, servants, etc. What is the object of all this? To get caught? No, but to start a false scent. Therefore, in his mind, every thing must have been arranged in advance, and the catastrophe was far from taking him by surprise; therefore the scene with M. de Thaller must have been prepared; therefore, it must have been on purpose that he left his pocketbook behind, with the bill in it that was to lead us straight here; therefore all we have seen is but a transparent comedy, got up for our special benefit, and intended to cover up the truth, and mislead the law.”

But Maxence was not entirely convinced.

“Still,” he remarked, “those enormous expenses.”

M. de Tregars shrugged his shoulders.

“Have you any idea,” he said, “what display can be made with a million? Let us admit that your father spent two, four millions even. The loss of the Mutual Credit is twelve millions. What has become of the other eight?”

And, as Maxence made no answer,

“It is those eight millions,” he added, “that I want, and that I shall have. It is in Paris that your father is hid, I feel certain. We must find him; and we must make him tell the truth, which I already more than suspect.”

Whereupon, throwing on the table the pint of beer which he had not drunk, he walked out of the cafe with Maxence.

“Here you are at last!” exclaimed the coachman, who had been waiting at the corner for over three hours, a prey to the utmost anxiety.

But M. de Tregars had no time for explanations; and, pushing Maxence into the cab, he jumped in after him, crying to the coachman,

“24 Rue Joquelet. Five francs extra for yourself.” A driver who expects an extra five francs, always has, for five minutes at least, a horse as fast as Gladiateur.

Whilst the cab was speeding on to its destination,

“What is most important for us now,” said M. de Tregars to Maxence, “is to ascertain how far the Mutual Credit crisis has progressed; and M. Latterman of the Rue Joquelet is the man in all Paris who can best inform us.”

Whoever has made or lost five hundred francs at the bourse knows M. Latterman, who, since the war, calls himself an Alsatian and curses with a fearful accent those “parparous Broossians.” This worthy speculator modestly calls himself a money-changer; but he would be a simpleton who should ask him for change: and it is certainly not that sort of business which gives him the three hundred thousand francs’ profits which he pockets every year.

When a company has failed, when it has been wound up, and the defrauded stockholders have received two or three per cent in all on their original investment, there is a prevailing idea that the certificates of its stocks are no longer good for any thing, except to light the fire. That’s a mistake. Long after the company has foundered, its shares float, like the shattered debris which the sea casts upon the beach months after the ship has been wrecked. These shares M. Latterman collects, and carefully stores away; and upon the shelves of his office you may see numberless shares and bonds of those numerous companies which have absorbed, in the past twenty years, according to some statistics, twelve hundred millions, and, according to others, two thousand millions, of the public fortune.

Say but a word, and his clerks will offer you some “Franco-American Company,” some “Steam Navigation Company of Marseilles,” some “Coal and Metal Company of the Asturias,” some “Transcontinental Memphis and El Paso” (of the United States), some “Caumart Slate Works,” and hundreds of others, which, for the general public, have no value, save that of old paper, that is from three to five cents a pound. And yet speculators are found who buy and sell these rags.

In an obscure corner of the bourse may be seen a miscellaneous population of old men with pointed beards, and overdressed young men, who deal in every thing salable, and other things besides. There are found foreign merchants, who will offer you stocks of merchandise, goods from auction, good claims to recover, and who at last will take out of their pockets an opera-glass, a Geneva watch (smuggled in), a revolver, or a bottle of patent hair-restorer.

Such is the market to which drift those shares which were once issued to represent millions, and which now represent nothing but a palpable proof of the audacity of swindlers, and the credulity of their dupes. And there are actually buyers for these shares, and they go up or down, according to the ordinary laws of supply and demand; for there is a demand for them, and here comes in the usefulness of M. Latterman’s business.

Does a tradesman, on the eve of declaring himself bankrupt, wish to defraud his creditors of a part of his assets, to conceal excessive expenses, or cover up some embezzlement, at once he goes to the Rue Joquelet, procures a select assortment of “Cantonal Credit,” “Rossdorif Mines,” or “Maumusson Salt Works,” and puts them carefully away in his safe.

And, when the receiver arrives,

“There are my assets,” he says. “I have there some twenty, fifty, or a hundred thousand francs of stocks, the whole of which is not worth five francs to-day; but it isn’t my fault. I thought it a good investment; and I didn’t sell, because I always thought the price would come up again.”

And he gets his discharge, because it would really be too cruel to punish a man because he has made unfortunate investments.

Better than any one, M. Latterman knows for what purpose are purchased the valueless securities which he sells; and he actually advises his customers which to take in preference, in order that their purchase at the time of their issue may appear more natural, and more likely. Nevertheless, he claims to be a perfectly honest man, and declares that he is no more responsible for the swindles that are committed by means of his stocks than a gunsmith for a murder committed with a gun that he has sold.

“But he will surely be able to tell us all about the Mutual Credit,” repeated Maxence to M. de Tregars.

Four o’clock struck when the carriage stopped in the Rue Joquelet. The bourse had just closed; and a few groups were still standing in the square, or along the railings.

“I hope we shall find this Latterman at home,” said Maxence.

They started up the stairs (for it is up on the second floor that this worthy operator has his offices); and, having inquired,

“M. Latterman is engaged with a customer,” answered a clerk. “Please sit down and wait.”

M. Latterman’s office was like all other caverns of the same kind. A very narrow space was reserved to the public; and all around, behind a heavy wire screen, the clerks could be seen busy with figures, or handling coupons. On the right, over a small window, appeared the word, “CASHIER.” A small door on the left led to the private office.

M. de Tregars and Maxence had patiently taken a seat on a hard leather bench, once red; and they were listening and looking on.

There was considerable animation about the place. Every few minutes, well-dressed young men came in with a hurried and important look, and, taking out of their pocket a memorandum-book, they would speak a few sentences of that peculiar dialect, bristling with figures, which is the language of the bourse. At the end of fifteen or twenty minutes,

“Will M. Latterman be engaged much longer?” inquired M. de Tregars.

“I do not know,” replied a clerk.

At that very moment, the little door on the left opened, and the customer came out who had detained M. Latterman so long. This customer was no other than M. Costeclar. Noticing M. de Tregars and Maxence, who had risen at the noise of the door, he appeared most disagreeably surprised. He even turned slightly pale, and took a step backwards, as if intending to return precipitately into the room that he was leaving; for M. Latterman’s office, like that of all other large operators, had several doors, without counting the one that leads to the police-court. But M. de Tregars gave him no time to effect this retreat. Stepping suddenly forward,

“Well?” he asked him in a tone that was almost threatening.

The brilliant financier had condescended to take off his hat, usually riveted upon his head, and, with the smile of a knave caught in the act,

“I did not expect to meet you here, my lord-marquis,” he said.

At the title of “marquis,” everybody looked up. “I believe you, indeed,” said M. de Tregars. “But what I want to know is, how is the matter progressing?”

“The plot is thickening. Justice is acting.”

“Indeed!”

“It is a fact. Jules Jottras, of the house of Jottras and Brother, was arrested this morning, just as he arrived at the bourse.”

“Why?”

“Because, it seems, he was an accomplice of Favoral; and it was he who sold the bonds stolen from the Mutual Credit.”

Maxence had started at the mention of his father’s name but, with a significant glance, M. de Tregars bid him remain silent, and, in a sarcastic tone,

“Famous capture!” he murmured. “And which proves the clear-sightedness of justice.”

“But this is not all,” resumed M. Costeclar. “Saint Pavin, the editor of ‘The Financial Pilot,’ you know, is thought to be seriously compromised. There was a rumor, at the close of the market, that a warrant either had been, or was about to be, issued against him.”

“And the Baron de Thaller?”

The employes of the office could not help admiring M. Costeclar’s extraordinary amount of patience.

“The baron,” he replied, “made his appearance at the bourse this afternoon, and was the object of a veritable ovation.”

“That is admirable! And what did he say?”

“That the damage was already repaired.”

“Then the shares of the Mutual Credit must have advanced.”

“Unfortunately, not. They did not go above one hundred and ten francs.”

“Were you not astonished at that?”

“Not much, because, you see, I am a business-man, I am; and I know pretty well how things work. When they left M. de Thaller this morning, the stockholders of the Mutual Credit had a meeting; and they pledged themselves, upon honor, not to sell, so as not to break the market. As soon as they had separated, each one said to himself, ‘Since the others are going to keep their stock, like fools, I am going to sell mine.’ Now, as there were three or four hundred of them who argued the same way, the market was flooded with shares.”

Looking the brilliant financier straight in the eyes,

“And yourself?” interrupted M. de Tregars.

“I!” stammered M. Costeclar, so visibly agitated, that the clerks could not help laughing.

“Yes. I wish to know if you have been more faithful to your word than the stockholders of whom you are speaking, and whether you have done as we had agreed.”

“Certainly; and, if you find me here--”

But M. de Tregars, placing his own hand over his shoulder, stopped him short.

“I think I know what brought you here,” he uttered; “and in a few moments I shall have ascertained.”

“I swear to you.”

“Don’t swear. If I am mistaken, so much the better for you. If I am not mistaken, I’ll prove to you that it is dangerous to try any sharp game on me, though I am not a business-man.”

Meantime M. Latterman, seeing no customer coming to take the place of the one who had left, became impatient at last, and appeared upon the threshold of his private office.

He was a man still young, small, thick-set, and vulgar. At the first glance, nothing of him could be seen but his abdomen,--a big, great, and ponderous abdomen, seat of his thoughts, and tabernacle of his aspirations, over which dangled a double gold chain, loaded with trinkets. Above an apoplectic neck, red as that of a turkey-cock, stood his little head, covered with coarse red hair, cut very short. He wore a heavy beard, trimmed in the form of a fan. His large, full-moon face was divided in two by a nose as flat as a Kalmuck’s, and illuminated by two small eyes, in which could be read the most thorough duplicity.

Seeing M. de Tregars and M. Costeclar engaged in conversation,

“Why! you know each other?” he said.

M. de Tregars advanced a step,

“We are even intimate friends,” he replied. “And it is very lucky that we should have met. I am brought here by the same matter as our dear Costeclar; and I was just explaining to him that he has been too hasty, and that it would be best to wait three or four days longer.”

“That’s just what I told him,” echoed the honorable financier.

Maxence understood only one thing,--that M. de Tregars had penetrated M. Costeclar’s designs; and he could not sufficiently admire his presence of mind, and his skill in grasping an unexpected opportunity.

“Fortunately there is nothing done yet,” added M. Latterman.

“And it is yet time to alter what has been agreed on,” said M. de Tregars. And, addressing himself to Costeclar,

“Come,” he added, “we’ll fix things with M. Latterman.”

But the other, who remembered the scene in the Rue St. Gilles, and who had his own reasons to be alarmed, would sooner have jumped out of the window.

“I am expected,” he stammered. “Arrange matters without me.”

“Then you give me carte blanche?”

Ah, if the brilliant financier had dared! But he felt upon him such threatening eyes, that he dared not even make a gesture of denial.

“Whatever you do will be satisfactory,” he said in the tone of a man who sees himself lost.

And, as he was going out of the door, M. de Tregars stepped into M. Latterman’s private office. He remained only five minutes; and when he joined Maxence, whom he had begged to wait for him,

“I think that we have got them,” he said as they walked off.

Their next visit was to M. Saint Pavin, at the office of “The Financial Pilot.” Every one must have seen at least one copy of that paper with its ingenious vignette, representing a bold mariner steering a boat, filled with timid passengers, towards the harbor of Million, over a stormy sea, bristling with the rocks of failure and the shoals of ruin. The office of “The Pilot” is, in fact, less a newspaper office than a sort of general business agency.

As at M. Latterman’s, there are clerks scribbling behind wire screens, small windows, a cashier, and an immense blackboard, on which the latest quotations of the Rente, and other French and foreign securities, are written in chalk.

As “The Pilot” spends some hundred thousand francs a year in advertising, in order to obtain subscribers; as, on the other hand, it only costs three francs a year,--it is clear that it is not on its subscriptions that it realizes any profits. It has other sources of income: its brokerages first; for it buys, sells, and executes, as the prospectus says, all orders for stocks, bonds, or other securities, for the best interests of the client. And it has plenty of business.

To the opulent brokerages, must be added advertising and puffing, --another mine. Six times out of ten, when a new enterprise is set on foot, the organizers send for Saint Pavin. Honest men, or knaves, they must all pass through his hands. They know it, and are resigned in advance.

“We rely upon you,” they say to him.

“What advantages have you to offer?” he replies.

Then they discuss the operation, the expected profits of the new company, and M. Saint Pavin’s demands. For a hundred thousand francs he promises bursts of lyrism; for fifty thousand he will be enthusiastic only. Twenty thousand francs will secure a moderate praise of the affair; ten thousand, a friendly neutrality. And, if the said company refuses any advantages to “The Pilot”--

“Ah, you must beware!” says Saint Pavin.

And from the very next number he commences his campaign. He is moderate at first, and leaves a door open for his retreat. He puts forth doubts only. He does not know much about it. “It may be an excellent thing; it may be a wretched one: the safest is to wait and see.”

That’s the first hint. If it remains without result, he takes up his pen again, and makes his doubts more pointed.

He knows how to steer clear of libel suits, how to handle figures so as to demonstrate, according to the requirements of the case, that two and two make three, or make five. It is seldom, that, before the third article, the company does not surrender at discretion.

All Paris knows him; and he has many friends. When M. de Tregars and Maxence arrived, they found the office full of people --speculators, brokers, go-betweens--come there to discuss the fluctuations of the day and the probabilities of the evening market.

“M. Saint Pavin is engaged,” one of the clerks told them.

Indeed, his coarse voice could be distinctly heard behind the screen. Soon he appeared, showing out an old gentleman, who seemed utterly confused at the scene, and to whom he was screaming,

“No, sir, no! ‘The Financial Pilot’ does not take that sort of business; and I find you very bold to come and propose to me a twopenny rascality.” But, noticing Maxence,

“M. Favoral!” he said. “By Jove! it is your good star that has brought you here. Come into the private office, my dear sir: come, we’ll have some fun now.”

Many of the people who were in the office had a word to say to M. Saint Pavin, some advice to ask him, an order to transmit, or some news to communicate. They had all stepped forward, and were holding out their hands with a friendly smile. He set them aside with his usual rudeness.

“By and by. I am busy now: leave me alone.”

And pushing Maxence towards the office-door, which he had just opened,

“Come in, come in!” he said in a tone of extraordinary impatience.

But M. de Tregars was coming in too; and, as he did not know him,

“What do you want, you?” he asked roughly.

“The gentleman is my best friend,” said Maxence, turning to him; “and I have no secret from him.”

“Let him walk in, then; but, by Heaven, let us hurry!”

Once very sumptuous, the private office of the editor of “The Financial Pilot” had fallen into a state of sordid dilapidation. If the janitor had received orders never to use a broom or a duster there, he obeyed them strictly. Disorder and dirt reigned supreme. Papers and manuscripts lay in all directions; and on the broad sofas the mud from the boots of all those who had lounged upon them had been drying for months. On the mantel-piece, in the midst of some half-dozen dirty glasses, stood a bottle of Madeira, half empty. Finally, before the fireplace, on the carpet, and along the furniture, cigar and cigarette stumps were heaped in profusion.

As soon as he had bolted the door, coming straight to Maxence,

“What has become of your father?” inquired M. Saint Pavin rudely.

Maxence started. That was the last question he expected to hear.

“I do not know,” he replied.

The manager of “The Pilot” shrugged his shoulders. “That you should say so to the commissary of police, to the judges, and to all Favoral’s enemies, I understand: it is your duty. That they should believe you, I understand too; for, after all, what do they care? But to me, a friend, though you may not think so, and who has reasons not to be credulous----”

“I swear to you that we have no idea where he has taken refuge.”

Maxence said this with such an accent of sincerity, that doubt was no longer possible. M. Saint Pavin’s features expressed the utmost surprise.

“What!” he exclaimed, “your father has gone without securing the means of hearing from his family?”

“Yes.”

“Without saying a word of his intentions to your mother, or your sister, or yourself?”

“Without one word.”

“Without leaving any money, perhaps?”

“We found only an insignificant sum after he left.” The editor of “The Pilot” made a gesture of ironical admiration. “Well, the thing is complete,” he said; “and Vincent is a smarter fellow than I gave him credit for; or else he must have cared more for those infernal women of his than any one supposed.”

M. de Tregars, who had remained hitherto silent, now stepped forward.

“What women?” he asked.

“How do I know?” he replied roughly. “How could any one ever find out any thing about a man who was more hermetically shut up in his coat than a Jesuit in his gown?”

“M. Costeclar--”

“That’s another nice bird! Still he may possibly have discovered something of Vincent’s life; for he led him a pretty dance. Wasn’t he about to marry Mlle. Favoral once?”

“Yes, in spite of herself even.”

“Then you are right: he had discovered something. But, if you rely on him to tell you anything whatever, you are reckoning without your host.”

“Who knows?” murmured M. de Tregars.

But M. Saint Pavin heard him not. Prey to a violent agitation, he was pacing up and down the room.

“Ah, those men of cold appearance,” he growled, “those men with discreet countenance, those close-shaving calculators, those moralists! What fools they do make of themselves when once started! Who can imagine to what insane extremities this one may have been driven under the spur of some mad passion!”

And stamping violently his foot upon the carpet, from which arose clouds of dust,

“And yet,” he swore, “I must find him. And, by thunder! wherever he may be hid, I shall find him.”

M. de Tregars was watching M. Saint Pavin with a scrutinizing eye.

“You have a great interest in finding him, then?” he said.

The other stopped short.

“I have the interest,” he replied, “of a man who thought himself shrewd, and who has been taken in like a child,--of a man to whom they had promised wonders, and who finds his situation imperilled, --of a man who is tired of working for a band of brigands who heap millions upon millions, and to whom, for all reward, they offer the police-court and a retreat in the State Prison for his old age, --in a word, the interests of a man who will and shall have revenge, by all that is holy!”

“On whom?”

“On the Baron de Thaller, sir! How, in the world, has he been able to compel Favoral to assume the responsibility of all, and to disappear? What enormous sum has he given to him?”

“Sir,” interrupted Maxence, “my father went off without a sou.”

M. Saint Pavin burst out in a loud laugh.

“And the twelve millions?” he asked. “What has become of them? Do you suppose they have been distributed in deeds of charity?”

And without waiting for any further objections,

“And yet,” he went on, “it is not with money alone that a man can be induced to disgrace himself, to confess himself a thief and a forger, to brave the galleys, to give up everything,--country, family, friends. Evidently the Baron de Thaller must have had other means of action, some hold on Favoral--”

M. de Tregars interrupted him.

“You speak,” he said, “as if you were absolutely certain of M. de Thaller’s complicity.”

“Of course.”

“Why don’t you inform on him, then?”

The editor of “The Pilot” started back. “What!” he exclaimed, “draw the fingers of the law into my own business! You don’t think of it! Besides, what good would that do me? I have no proofs of my allegations. Do you suppose that Thaller has not taken his precautions, and tied my hands? No, no! without Favoral there is nothing to be done.”

“Do you suppose, then, that you could induce him to surrender himself?”

“No, but to furnish me the proofs I need, to send Thaller where they have already sent that poor Jottras.”

And, becoming more and more excited,

“But it is not in a month that I should want those proofs,” he went on, “nor even in two weeks, but to-morrow, but at this very moment. Before the end of the week, Thaller will have wound up the operation, realized, Heaven knows how many millions, and put every thing in such nice order, that justice, who in financial matters is not of the first capacity, will discover nothing wrong. If he can do that, he is safe, he is beyond reach, and will be dubbed a first-class financier. Then to what may he not aspire! Already he talks of having himself elected deputy; and he says everywhere that he has found, to marry his daughter, a gentleman who bears one of the oldest names in France,--the Marquis de Tregars.”

“Why, this is the Marquis de Tregars!” exclaimed Maxence, pointing to Marius.

For the first time, M. Saint Pavin took the trouble to examine his visitor; and he, who knew life too well not to be a judge of men, he seemed surprised.

“Please excuse me, sir,” he uttered with a politeness very different from his usual manner, “and permit me to ask you if you know the reasons why M. de Thaller is so prodigiously anxious to have you for a son-in-law.”

“I think,” replied M. de Tregars coldly, “that M. de Thaller would not be sorry to deprive me of the right to seek the causes of my father’s ruin.”

But he was interrupted by a great noise of voices in the adjoining room; and almost at once there was a loud knock at the door, and a voice called,

“In the name of the law!”

The editor of “The Pilot” had become whiter than his shirt.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” he said. “Thaller has got ahead of me; and perhaps I may be lost.”

Meantime he did not lose his wits. Quick as thought he took out of a drawer a package of letters, threw them into the fireplace, and set fire to them, saying, in a voice made hoarse by emotion and anger,

“No one shall come in until they are burnt.”

But it required an incredibly long time to make them catch fire; and M. Saint Pavin, kneeling before the hearth, was stirring them up, and scattering them, to make them burn faster.

“And now,” said M. de Tregars, “will you hesitate to deliver up the Baron de Thaller into the hands of justice?”

He turned around with flashing eyes.

“Now,” he replied, “if I wish to save myself, I must save him too. Don’t you understand that he holds me?”

And, seeing that the last sheets of his correspondence were consumed,

“You may open now,” he said to Maxence.

Maxence obeyed; and a commissary of police, wearing his scarf of office, rushed into the room; whilst his men, not without difficulty, kept back the crowd in the outer office.

The commissary, who was an old hand, and had perhaps been on a hundred expeditions of this kind, had surveyed the scene at a glance. Noticing in the fireplace the carbonized debris, upon which still fluttered an expiring flame,

“That’s the reason, then,” he said, “why you were so long opening the door?”

A sarcastic smile appeared upon the lips of the editor of “The Pilot.”

“Private matters,” he replied; “women’s letters.”

“This will be moral evidence against you, sir.”

“I prefer it to material evidence.”

Without condescending to notice the impertinence, the commissary was casting a suspicious glance on Maxence and M. de Tregars.

“Who are these gentlemen who were closeted with you?” he asked.

“Visitors, sir. This is M. Favoral.”

“The son of the cashier of the Mutual Credit?”

“Exactly; and this gentleman is the Marquis de Tregars.”

“You should have opened the door when you heard a knocking in the name of the law,” grumbled the commissary.

But he did not insist. Taking a paper from his pocket, he opened it, and, handing it to M. Saint Pavin,

“I have orders to arrest you,” he said. “Here is the warrant.”

With a careless gesture, the other pushed it back. “What’s the use of reading?” he said. “When I heard of the arrest of that poor Jottras, I guessed at once what was in store for me. It is about the Mutual Credit swindle, I imagine.”

“Exactly.”

“I have no more to do with it than yourself, sir; and I shall have very little trouble in proving it. But that is not your business. And you are going, I suppose, to put the seals on my papers?”

“Except on those that you have burnt.”

M. Saint Pavin burst out laughing. He had recovered his coolness and his impudence, and seemed as much at ease as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Shall I be allowed to speak to my clerks,” he asked, “and to give them my instructions?”

“Yes,” replied the commissary, “but in my presence.”

The clerks, being called, appeared, consternation depicted upon their countenances, but joy sparkling in their eyes. In reality they were delighted at the misfortune which befell their employer.

“You see what happens to me, my boys,” he said. “But don’t be uneasy. In less than forty-eight hours, the error of which I am the victim will be recognized, and I shall be liberated on bail. At any rate, I can rely upon you, can’t I?”

They all swore that they would be more attentive and more zealous than ever.

And then addressing himself to his cashier, who was his confidential and right-hand man,

“As to you, Bernard,” he said, “you will run to M. de Thaller’s, and advise him of what’s going on. Let him have funds ready; for all our depositors will want to draw out their money at once. You will then call at the printing-office: have my article on the Mutual Credit kept out, and insert in its place some financial news cut out from other papers. Above all, don’t mention my arrest, unless M. de Thaller should demand it. Go ahead, and let ‘The Pilot’ appear as usual: that’s important.”

He had, whilst speaking, lighted a cigar. The honest man, victim of human iniquity, has not a firmer and more tranquil countenance.

“Justice does not know,” he said to the commissary, who was fumbling in all the drawers of the desk, “what irreparable damage she may cause by arresting so hastily a man who has charge of immense interests like me. It is the fortune of ten or twelve small capitalists that is put in jeopardy.”

Already the witnesses of the arrest had retired, one by one, to go and scatter the news along the Boulevard, and also to see what could be made out of it; for, at the bourse, news is money.

M. de Tregars and Maxence left also. As they passed the door,

“Don’t you say any thing about what I told you,” M. Saint Pavin recommended to them.

M. de Tregars made no answer. He had the contracted features and tightly-drawn lips of a man who is maturing a grave determination, which, once taken, will be irrevocable.

Once in the street, and when Maxence had opened the carriage-door,

“We are going to separate here,” he told him in that brief tone of voice which reveals a settled plan. “I know enough now to venture to call at M. de Thaller’s. There only shall I be able to see how to strike the decisive blow. Return to the Rue St. Gilles, and relieve your mother’s and sister’s anxiety. You shall see me during the evening, I promise you.”

And, without waiting for an answer, he jumped into the cab, which started off.

But it was not to the Rue St. Gilles that Maxence went. He was anxious, first, to see Mlle. Lucienne, to tell her the events of that day, the busiest of his existence; to tell her his discoveries, his surprises, his anxieties, and his hopes.

To his great surprise, he failed to find her at the Hotel des Folies. She had gone riding at three o’clock, M. Fortin told him, and had not yet returned; but she could not be much longer, as it was already getting dark. Maxence went out again then, to see if he could not meet her. He had walked a little way along the Boulevard, when, at some distance off, on the Place du Chateau d’Eau, he thought he noticed an unusual bustle. Almost immediately he heard shouts of terror. Frightened people were running in all directions; and right before him a carriage, going at full gallop, passed like a flash.

But, quick as it had passed, he had time to recognize Mlle. Lucienne, pale, and clinging desperately to the seat. Wild with fear, he started after it as fast as he could run. It was clear that the driver had no control over his horses. A policeman who tried to stop them was knocked down. Ten steps farther, the hind-wheel of the carriage, catching the wheel of a heavy wagon, broke to splinters; and Mlle. Lucienne was thrown into the street, whilst the driver fell over on the sidewalk.

VI

The Baron de Thaller was too practical a man to live in the same house, or even in the same district, where his offices were located. To dwell in the midst of his business; to be constantly subjected to the contact of his employes, to the unkindly comments of a crowd of subordinates; to expose himself to hourly annoyances, to sickening solicitations, to the reclamations and eternal complaints of his stockholders and his clients! Pouah! He’d have given up the business first. And so, on the very days when he had established the offices of the Mutual Credit in the Rue de Quatre-Septembre, he had purchased a house in the Rue de la Pepiniere within a step of the Faubourg St. Honore.

It was a brand-new house, which had never yet been occupied, and which had just been erected by a contractor who was almost celebrated, towards 1866, at the moment of the great transformations of Paris, when whole blocks were leveled to the ground, and rose again so rapidly, that one might well wonder whether the masons, instead of a trowel, did not make use of a magician’s wand.

This contractor, named Parcimieux, had come from the Limousin in 1860 with his carpenter’s tools for all fortune, and, in less than six years, had accumulated, at the lowest estimate, six millions of francs. Only he was a modest man, and took as much pains to conceal his fortune, and offend no one, as most _parvenus_ do to display their wealth, and insult the public.

Though he could hardly sign his name, yet he knew and practised the maxim of the Greek philosopher, which is, perhaps, the true secret of happiness,--hide thy life. And there were no expedients to which he did not resort to hide it. At the time of his greatest prosperity, for instance, having need of a carriage, he had applied to the manager of the Petites Voitures Company, and had had built for himself two cabs, outwardly similar in every respect to those used by the company, but within, most luxuriously upholstered, and drawn by horses of common appearance, but who could go their twenty-five miles in two hours any day. And these he had hired by the year.

Having his carriage, the worthy builder determined to have, also, his house, his own house, built by himself. But this required infinitely greater precautions still.

“For, as you may imagine,” he explained to his friends, “a man does not make as much money as I have, without also making many cruel, bitter, and irreconcilable enemies. I have against me all the builders who have not succeeded, all the sub-contractors I employ, and who say that I speculate on their poverty, and the thousands of workmen who work for me, and swear that I grind them down to the dust. Already they call me brigand, slaver, thief, leech. What would it be, if they saw me living in a beautiful house of my own? They’d swear that I could not possibly have got so rich honestly, and that I must have committed some crimes. Besides, to build me a handsome house on the street would be, in case of a mob, setting up windows for the stones of all the rascals who have been in my employment.”

Such were M. Parcimieux’s thoughts, when, as he expressed it, he resolved to build.

A lot was for sale in the Rue de la Pepiniere. He bought it, and at the same time purchased the adjoining house, which he immediately caused to be torn down. This operation placed in his possession a vast piece of ground, not very wide, but of great depth, stretching, as it did, back to the Rue Labaume. At once work was begun according to a plan which his architect and himself had spent six months in maturing. On the line of the street arose a house of the most modest appearance, two stories in height only, with a very high and very wide carriage-door for the passage of vehicles. This was to deceive the vulgar eye,--the outside of the cab, as it were. Behind this house, between a spacious court and a vast garden was built the residence of which M. Parcimieux had dreamed; and it really was an exceptional building both by the excellence of the materials used, and by the infinite care which presided over the minutest details. The marbles for the vestibule and the stairs were brought from Africa, Italy, and Corsica. He sent to Rome for workmen for the mosaics. The joiner and locksmithing work was intrusted to real artists.

Repeating to every one that he was working for a great foreign lord, whose orders he went to take every morning, he was free to indulge his most extravagant fancies, without fearing jests or unpleasant remarks.

Poor old man! The day when the last workman had driven in the last nail, an attack of apoplexy carried him off, without giving him time to say, “Oh!” Two days after, all his relatives from the Limousin were swooping into Paris like a pack of wolves. Six millions to divide: what a godsend! Litigation followed, as a matter of course; and the house was offered for sale under a judgment.

M. de Thaller bought it for two hundred and seventy-five thousand francs,--about one-third what it had cost to build.

A month later he had moved into it; and the expenses which he incurred to furnish it in a style worthy of the building itself was the talk of the town. And yet he was not fully satisfied with his purchase.

Unlike M. Parcimieux, he had no wish whatever to conceal his wealth.

What! he owned one of those exquisite houses which excite at once the wonder and the envy of passers-by, and that house was hid behind such a common-looking building!

“I must have that shanty pulled down,” he said from time to time.

And then he thought of something else; and the “shanty” was still standing on that evening, when, after leaving Maxence, M. de Tregars presented himself at M. de Thaller’s.

The servants had, doubtless, received their instructions; for, as soon as Marius emerged from the porch of the front-house, the porter advanced from his lodge, bent double, his mouth open to his very ears by the most obsequious smile.

Without waiting for a question,

“The baron has not yet come home--,” he said. “But he cannot be much longer away; and certainly the baroness is at home for my lord-marquis. Please, then, give yourself the trouble to pass.”

And, standing aside, he struck upon the enormous gong that stood near his lodge a single sharp blow, intended to wake up the footman on duty in the vestibule, and to announce a visitor of note. Slowly, but not without quietly observing every thing, M. de Tregars crossed the courtyard, covered with fine sand,--they would have powdered it with golden dust, if they had dared,--and surrounded on all sides with bronze baskets, in which beautiful rhododendrons were blossoming.

It was nearly six o’clock. The manager of the Mutual Credit dined at seven; and the preparations for this important event were everywhere apparent. Through the large windows of the dining-room the steward could be seen presiding over the setting of the table. The butler was coming up from the cellar, loaded with bottles. Finally, through the apertures of the basement arose the appetizing perfumes of the kitchen.

What enormous business it required to support such a style, to display this luxury, which would shame one of those German princelings, who exchanged the crown of their ancestors for a Prussian livery gilded with French gold!--other people’s money.

Meantime, the blow struck by the porter on the gong had produced the desired effect; and the gates of the vestibule seemed to open of their own accord before M. de Tregars as he ascended the stoop.

This vestibule with the splendor of which Mlle. Lucienne had been so deeply impressed, would, indeed, have been worthy the attention of an artist, had it been allowed to retain the simple grandeur and the severe harmony which M. Parcimieux’s architect had imparted to it.

But M. de Thaller, as he was proud of boasting, had a perfect horror of simplicity; and, wherever he discovered a vacant space as big as his hand, he hung a picture, a bronze, or a piece of china, any thing and anyhow.

The two footmen were standing when M. de Tregars came in. Without asking any question, “Will M. le Marquis please follow me?” said the youngest.

And, opening the broad glass doors, he began walking in front of M. de Tregars, along a staircase with marble railing, the elegant proportions of which were absolutely ruined by a ridiculous profusion of “objects of art” of all nature, and from all sources. This staircase led to a vast semicircular landing, upon which, between columns of precious marble, opened three wide doors. The footman opened the middle one, which led to M. de Thaller’s picture-gallery, a celebrated one in the financial world, and which had acquired for him the reputation of an enlightened amateur.

But M. de Tregars had no time to examine this gallery, which, moreover, he already knew well enough. The footman showed him into the small drawing-room of the baroness, a bijou of a room, furnished in gilt and crimson satin.

“Will M. le Marquis be kind enough to take a seat?” he said. “I run to notify Mme. le Baronne of M. le Marquis’s visit.”

The footman uttered these titles of nobility with a singular pomp, and as if some of their lustre was reflected upon himself. Nevertheless, it was evident that “Marquis” jingled to his ear much more pleasantly than “Baronne.”

Remaining alone, M. de Tregars threw himself upon a seat. Worn out by the emotions of the day, and by an extraordinary contention of mind, he felt thankful for this moment of respite, which permitted him, at the moment of a decisive step, to collect all his energy and all his presence of mind.

And after two minutes he was so deeply absorbed in his thoughts, that he started, like a man suddenly aroused from his sleep, at the sound of an opening door. At the same moment he heard a slight exclamation of surprise, “Ah!”

Instead of the Baroness de Thaller, it was her daughter, Mlle. Cesarine, who had come in.

Stepping forward to the centre of the room, and acknowledging by a familiar gesture M. de Tregars’ most respectful bow,

“You should warn people,” she said. “I came here to look for my mother, and it is you I find. Why, you scared me to death. What a crack! Princess dear!”

And taking the young man’s hand, and pressing it to her breast,

“Feel,” she added, “how my heart beats.”

Younger than Mlle. Gilberte, Mlle. Cesarine de Thaller had a reputation for beauty so thoroughly established, that to call it in question would have seemed a crime to her numerous admirers. And really she was a handsome person. Rather tall and well made, she had broad hips, the waist round and supple as a steel rod, and a magnificent throat. Her neck was, perhaps, a little too thick and too short; but upon her robust shoulders was scattered in wild ringlets the rebellious hair that escaped from her comb. She was a blonde, but of that reddish blonde, almost as dark as mahogany, which Titian admired, and which the handsome Venetians obtained by means of rather repulsive practices, and by exposing themselves to the noonday sun on the terraces of their palaces. Her complexion had the gilded hues of amber. Her lips, red as blood, displayed as they opened, teeth of dazzling whiteness. In her large prominent eyes, of a milky blue, like the Northern skies, laughed the eternal irony of a soul that no longer has faith in any thing. More anxious of her fame than of good taste, she wore a dress of doubtful shade, puffed up by means of an extravagant pannier, and buttoned obliquely across the chest, according to that ridiculous and ungraceful style invented by flat or humped women.

Throwing herself upon a chair, and placing cavalierly one foot upon another, so as to display her leg, which was admirable,

“Do you know that it’s perfectly stunning to see you here?” she said to M. de Tregars. “Just imagine, for a moment, what a face the Baron Three Francs Sixty-eight will make when he sees you!”

It was her father whom she called thus, since the day when she had discovered that there was a German coin called thaler, which represents three francs and sixty-eight centimes in French currency.

“You know, I suppose,” she went on, “that papa has just been badly stuck?”

M. de Tregars was excusing himself in vague terms; but it was one of Mlle. Cesarine’s habits never to listen to the answers which were made to her questions.

“Favoral,” she continued, “papa’s cashier, has just started on an international picnic. Did you know him?”

“Very little.”

“An old fellow, always dressed like a country sexton, and with a face like an undertaker. And the Baron Three Francs Sixty-eight, an old bird, was fool enough to be taken in by him! For he was taken in. He had a face like a man whose chimney is on fire, when he came to tell us, mamma and myself, that Favoral had gone off with twelve millions.”

“And has he really carried off that enormous sum?”

“Not entire, of course, because it was not since day before yesterday only that he began digging into the Mutual Credit’s pile. There were years that this venerable old swell was leading a somewhat-variegated existence, in company with rather-funny ladies, you know. And as he was not exactly calculated to be adored at par, why, it cost papa’s stockholders a pretty lively premium. But, anyhow, he must have carried off a handsome nugget.”

And, bouncing to the piano, she began an accompaniment loud enough to crack the window-panes, singing at the same time the popular refrain of the “Young Ladies of Pautin”:

Cashier, you’ve got the bag; Quick on your little nag, And then, ho, ho, for Belgium!

Any one but Marius de Tregars would have been doubtless strangely surprised at Mlle. de Thaller’s manners. But he had known her for some time already: he was familiar with her past life, her habits, her tastes, and her pretensions. Until the age of fifteen, Mlle. Cesarine had remained shut up in one of those pleasant Parisian boarding-schools, where young ladies are initiated into the great art of the toilet, and from which they emerge armed with the gayest theories, knowing how to see without seeming to look, and to lie boldly without blushing; in a word, ripe for society. The directress of the boarding-school, a lady of the ton, who had met with reverses, and who was a good deal more of a dressmaker than a teacher, said of Mlle. Cesarine, who paid her three thousand five hundred francs a year,

“She gives the greatest hopes for the future; and I shall certainly make a superior woman of her.”

But the opportunity was not allowed her. The Baroness de Thaller discovered, one morning, that it was impossible for her to live without her daughter, and that her maternal heart was lacerated by a separation which was against the sacred laws of nature. She took her home, therefore, declaring that nothing, henceforth, not even her marriage, should separate them, and that she should finish herself the education of the dear child. From that moment, in fact, whoever saw the Baroness de Thaller would also see Mlle. Cesarine following in her wake.

A girl of fifteen, discreet and well-trained, is a convenient chaperon; a chaperon which enables a woman to show herself boldly where she might not have dared to venture alone. In presence of a mother followed by her daughter, disconcerted slander hesitates, and dares not speak.

Under the pretext that Cesarine was still but a child and of no consequence, Mme. de Thaller dragged her everywhere,--to the bois and to the races, visiting and shopping, to balls and parties, to the watering-places and the seashore, to the restaurant, and to all the “first nights” at the Palais Royal, the Bouffes, the Varietes, and the Delassements. It was, therefore, especially at the theatre, that the education of Mlle. de Thaller, so happily commenced, had received the finishing touch. At sixteen she was thoroughly familiar with the repertoire of the genre theatres, imitated Schneider far better than ever did Silly, and sang with surprising intonations and astonishing gestures Blanche d’Autigny’s successful moods, and Theresa’s most wanton verses.

Between times, she studied the fashion papers, and formed her style in reading the “Vie Parisienne,” whose most enigmatic articles had no allusions sufficiently obscure to escape her penetration.

She learned to ride on horseback, to fence and to shoot, and distinguished herself at pigeon-matches. She kept a betting-book, played Trente et Quarante at Monaco; and Baccarat had no secrets for her. At Trouville she astonished the natives with the startling novelty of her bathing-costumes; and, when she found herself the centre of a reasonable circle of lookers-on, she threw herself in the water with a pluck that drew upon her the applause of the bathing-masters. She could smoke a cigarette, empty nearly a glass of champagne; and once her mother was obliged to bring her home, and put her quick to bed, because she had insisted upon trying absinthe, and her conversation had become somewhat too eccentric.

Leading such a life, it was difficult that public opinion should always spare Mme. and Mlle. de Thaller. There were sceptics who insinuated that this steadfast friendship between mother and daughter had very much the appearance of the association of two women bound together by the complicity of a common secret. A broker told how, one evening, or one night rather, for it was nearly two o’clock, happening to pass in front of the Moulin-Rouge, he had seen the Baroness and Mlle. Cesarine coming out, accompanied by a gentleman, to him unknown, but who, he was quite sure, was not the Baron de Thaller.

A certain journey which mother and daughter had undertaken in the heart of the winter, and which had lasted not less than two months, had been generally attributed to an imprudence, the consequences of which it had become impossible to conceal. They had been in Italy, they said when they returned; but no one had seen them there. Yet, as Mme. and Mlle. de Thaller’s mode of life was, after all, the same as that of a great many women who passed for being perfectly proper, as there was no positive or palpable fact brought against them, as no name was mentioned, many people shrugged their shoulders, and replied,

“Pure slanders.”

And why not, since the Baron de Thaller, the most interested party, held himself satisfied?

To the ill-advised friends who ventured some allusions to the public rumors, he replied, according to his humor,

“My daughter can play the mischief generally, if she sees fit. As I shall give a dowry of a million, she will always find a husband.”

Or else, “And what of it? Do not American young ladies enjoy unlimited freedom? Are they not constantly seen going out with young gentlemen, or walking or traveling alone? Are they, for all that, less virtuous than our girls, who are kept under such close watch? Do they make less faithful wives, or less excellent mothers? Hypocrisy is not virtue.”

To a certain extent, the Manager of the Mutual Credit was right.

Already Mlle. de Thaller had had to decide upon several quite suitable offers of marriage and she had squarely refused them all.

“A husband!” she had answered each time. “Thank you, none for me. I have good enough teeth to eat up my dowry myself. Later, we’ll see,--when I’ve cut my wisdom teeth, and I am tired of my bachelor life.”

She did not seem near getting tired of it, though she pretended that she had no more illusions, was thoroughly blasee, had exhausted every sensation, and that life henceforth had no surprise in reserve for her. Her reception of M. de Tregars was, therefore, one of Mlle. Cesarine’s least eccentricities, as was also that sudden fancy; to apply to the situation one of the most idiotic rondos of her repertoires:

“Cashier, you’ve got the bag; Quick on your little nag”

Neither did she spare him a single verse: and, when she stopped,

“I see with pleasure,” said M. de Tregars, “that the embezzlement of which your father has just been the victim does not in any way offend your good humor.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Would you have me cry,” she said, “because the stockholders of the Baron Three Francs Sixty-eight have been swindled? Console yourself: they are accustomed to it.”

And, as M. de Tregars made no answer,

“And in all that,” she went on, “I see no one to pity except the wife and daughter of that old stick Favoral.”

“They are, indeed, much to be pitied.”

“They say that the mother is a good old thing.”

“She is an excellent person.”

“And the daughter? Costeclar was crazy about her once. He made eyes like a carp in love, as he told us, to mamma and myself, ‘She is an angel, mesdames, an angel! And when I have given her a little chic!’ Now tell me, is she really as good looking as all that?”

“She is quite good looking.”

“Better looking than me?”

“It is not the same style, mademoiselle.”

Mlle. de Thaller had stopped singing; but she had not left the piano. Half turned towards M. de Tregars, she ran her fingers listlessly over the keys, striking a note here and there, as if to punctuate her sentences.

“Ah, how nice!” she exclaimed, “and, above all, how gallant! Really, if you venture often on such declarations, mothers would be very wrong to trust you alone with their daughters.”

“You did not understand me right, mademoiselle.”

“Perfectly right, on the contrary. I asked you if I was better looking than Mlle. Favoral; and you replied to me, that it was not the same style.”

“It is because, mademoiselle, there is indeed no possible comparison between you, who are a wealthy heiress, and whose life is a perpetual enchantment, and a poor girl, very humble, and very modest, who rides in the omnibus, and who makes her dresses herself.”

A contemptuous smile contracted Mlle. Cesarine’s lips.

“Why not?” she interrupted. “Men have such funny tastes!”

And, turning around suddenly, she began another rondo, no less famous than the first, and borrowed, this time, from the third act of the Petites-Blanchisseuses:

“What matters the quality? Beauty alone takes the prize Women before man must rise, And claim perfect equality.”

Very attentively M. de Tregars was observing her. He had not been the dupe of the great surprise she had manifested when she found him in the little parlor.

“She knew I was here,” he thought; “and it is her mother who has sent her to me. But why? and for what purpose?”

“With all that,” she resumed, “I see the sweet Mme. Favoral and her modest daughter in a terribly tight place. What a ‘bust,’ marquis!”

“They have a great deal of courage, mademoiselle.”

“Naturally. But, what is better, the daughter has a splendid voice: at least, so her professor told Costeclar. Why should she not go on the stage? Actresses make lots of money, you know. Papa’ll help her, if she wishes. He has a great deal of influence in the theatres, papa has.”

“Mme. and Mlle. Favoral have friends.”

“Ah, yes! Costeclar.”

“Others besides.”

“I beg your pardon; but it seems to me that this one will do to begin with. He is gallant, Costeclar, extremely gallant, and, moreover, generous as a lord. Why should he not offer to that youthful and timid damsel a nice little position in mahogany and rosewood? That way, we should have the pleasure of meeting her around the lake.”

And she began singing again, with a slight variation,

“Manon, who, before the war, Carried clothes for a living, Now for her gains is trusting To that insane Costeclar.”

“Ah, that big red-headed girl is terribly provoking!” thought M. de Tregars.

But, as he did not as yet understand very clearly what she wished to come to, he kept on his guard, and remained cold as marble.

Already she had again turned towards him.

“What a face you are making!” she said. “Are you jealous of the fiery Costeclar, by chance?”

“No, mademoiselle, no!”

“Then, why don’t you want him to succeed in his love? But he will, you’ll see! Five hundred francs on Costeclar! Do you take it? No? I am sorry. It’s twenty-five napoleons lost for me. I know very well that Mlle.--what’s her name?”

“Gilberte.”

“Hallo! a nice name for a cashier’s daughter! I am aware that she once sent that poor Costeclar and his offer to--Chaillot. But she had resources then; whilst now--It’s stupid as it can be; but people have to eat!”

“There are still women, mademoiselle, capable of starving to death.”

M. de Tregars now felt satisfied. It seemed evident to him that they had somehow got wind of his intentions; that Mlle. de Thaller had been sent to feel the ground; and that she only attacked Mlle. Gilberte in order to irritate him, and compel him, in a moment of anger, to declare himself.

“Bash!” she said, “Mlle. Favoral is like all the others. If she had to select between the amiable Costeclar and a charcoal furnace, it is not the furnace she would take.”

At all times, Marius de Tregars disliked Mlle. Cesarine to a supreme degree; but at this moment, without the pressing desire he had to see the Baron and Baroness de Thaller, he would have withdrawn.

“Believe me, mademoiselle,” he uttered coldly. “Spare a poor girl stricken by a most cruel misfortune. Worse might happen to you.”

“To me! And what the mischief do you suppose can happen me?”

“Who knows?”

She started to her feet so violently, that she upset the piano-stool.

“Whatever it may be,” she exclaimed, “I say in advance, I am glad!”

And as M. de Tregars turned his head in some surprise,

“Yes, I am glad!” she repeated, “because it would be a change; and I am sick of the life I lead. Yes, sick to be eternally and invariably happy of that same dreary happiness. And to think that there are idiots who believe that I amuse myself, and who envy my fate! To think, that, when I ride through the streets, I hear girls exclaim, whilst looking at me, ‘Isn’t she lucky?’ Little fools! I’d like to see them in my place. They live, they do. Their pleasures are not all alike. They have anxieties and hopes, ups and downs, hours of rain and hours of sunshine; whilst I--always dead calm! the barometer always at ‘Set fair.’ What a bore! Do you know what I did to-day? Exactly the same thing as yesterday; and to-morrow I’ll do the same thing as to-day.

“A good dinner is a good thing; but always the same dinner, without extras or additions--pouah! Too many truffles. I want some corned beef and cabbage. I know the bill of fare by heart, you see. In winter, theatres and balls; in summer, races and the seashore; summer and winter, shopping, rides to the bois, calls, trying dresses, perpetual adoration by mother’s friends, all of them brilliant and gallant fellows to whom the mere thought of my dowry gives the jaundice. Excuse me, if I yawn: I am thinking of their conversations.

“And to think,” she went on, “that such will be my existence until I make up my mind to take a husband! For I’ll have to come to it too. The Baron Three Sixty-eight will present to me some sort of a swell, attracted by my money. I’ll answer, ‘I’d just as soon have him as any other,’ and he will be admitted to the honor of paying his attentions to me. Every morning he will send me a splendid bouquet: every evening, after bank-hours, he’ll come along with fresh kid gloves and a white vest. During the afternoon, he and papa will pull each other’s hair out on the subject of the dowry. At last the happy day will arrive. Can’t you see it from here? Mass with music, dinner, ball. The Baron Three Sixty-eight will not spare me a single ceremony. The marriage of the manager of the Mutual Credit must certainly be an advertisement. The papers will publish the names of the bridesmaids and of the guests.

“To be sure, papa will have a face a yard long; because he will have been compelled to pay the dowry the day before. Mamma will be all upset at the idea of becoming a grandmother. The bridegroom will be in a wretched humor, because his boots will be too tight; and I’ll look like a goose, because I’ll be dressed in white; and white is a stupid color, which is not at all becoming to me. Charming family gathering, isn’t it? Two weeks later, my husband will be sick of me, and I’ll be disgusted with him. After a month, we’ll be at daggers’ points. He’ll go back to his club and his mistresses; and I--I shall have conquered the right to go out alone; and I’ll begin again going to the bois, to balls, to races, wherever my mother goes. I’ll spend an enormous amount of money on my dress, and I’ll make debts which papa will pay.”

Though any thing might be expected of Mlle. Cesarine, still M. de Tregars seemed visibly astonished. And she, laughing at his surprise,

“That’s the invariable programme,” she went on; “and that’s why I say I’m glad at the idea of a change, whatever it may be. You find fault with me for not pitying Mlle. Gilberte. How could I, since I envy her? She is happy, because her future is not settled, laid out, fixed in advance. She is poor; but she is free. She is twenty; she is pretty; she has an admirable voice; she can go on the stage to-morrow, and be, before six months, one of the pet actresses of Paris. What a life then! Ah, that is the one I dream, the one I would have selected, had I been mistress of my destiny.”

But she was interrupted by the noise of the opening door.

The Baroness de Thaller appeared. As she was, immediately after dinner, to go to the opera, and afterwards to a party given by the Viscountess de Bois d’Ardon, she was in full dress. She wore a dress, cut audaciously low in the neck, of very light gray satin, trimmed with bands of cherry-colored silk edged with lace. In her hair, worn high over her head, she had a bunch of fuchsias, the flexible stems of which, fastened by a large diamond star, trailed down to her very shoulders, white and smooth as marble.

But, though she forced herself to smile, her countenance was not that of festive days; and the glance which she cast upon her daughter and Marius de Tregars was laden with threats. In a voice of which she tried in vain to control the emotion,

“How very kind of you, marquis,” she began, “to respond so soon to my invitation of this morning! I am really distressed to have kept you waiting; but I was dressing. After what has happened to M. de Thaller, it is absolutely indispensable that I should go out, show myself: otherwise our enemies will be going around to-morrow, saying everywhere that I am in Belgium, preparing lodgings for my husband.”

And, suddenly changing her tone,

“But what was that madcap Cesarine telling you?” she asked.

It was with a profound surprise that M. de Tregars discovered that the entente cordiale which he suspected between the mother and daughter did not exist, at least at this moment.

Veiling under a jesting tone the strange conjectures which the unexpected discovery aroused within him,

“Mlle. Cesarine,” he replied, “who is much to be pitied, was telling me all her troubles.”

She interrupted him.

“Do not take the trouble to tell a story, M. le Marquis,” she said. “Mamma knows it as well as yourself; for she was listening at the door.”

“Cesarine!” exclaimed Mme. de Thaller.

“And, if she came in so suddenly, it is because she thought it was fully time to cut short my confidences.”

The face of the baroness became crimson.

“The child is mad!” she said.

The child burst out laughing.

“That’s my way,” she went on. “You should not have sent me here by chance, and against my wish. You made me do it: don’t complain. You were sure that I had but to appear, and M. de Tregars would fall at my feet. I appeared, and--you saw the effect through the keyhole, didn’t you?”

Her features contracted, her eyes flashing, twisting her lace handkerchief between her fingers loaded with rings,

“It is unheard of,” said Mme. de Thaller. “She has certainly lost her head.”

Dropping her mother an ironical courtesy,

“Thanks for the compliment!” said the young lady. “Unfortunately, I never was more completely in possession of all the good sense I may boast of than I am now, dear mamma. What were you telling me a moment since? ‘Run, the Marquis de Tregars is coming to ask your hand: it’s all settled.’ And what did I answer? ‘No use to trouble myself: if, instead of one million, papa were to give me two, four millions, indeed all the millions paid by France to Prussia, M. de Tregars would not have me for a wife.’”

And, looking Marius straight in the face,

“Am I not right, M. le Marquis?” she asked. “And isn’t it a fact that you wouldn’t have me at any price? Come, now, your hand upon your heart, answer.”

M. de Tregars’ situation was somewhat embarrassing between these two women, whose anger was equal, though it manifested itself in a different way. Evidently it was a discussion begun before, which was now continued in his presence.

“I think, mademoiselle,” he began, “that you have been slandering yourself gratuitously.”

“Oh, no! I swear it to you,” she replied; “and, if mamma had not happened in, you would have heard much more. But that was not an answer.”

And, as M. de Tregars said nothing, she turned towards the baroness,

“Ah, ah! you see,” she said. “Who was crazy,--you, or I? Ah! you imagine here that money is everything, that every thing is for sale, and that every thing can be bought. Well, no! There are still men, who, for all the gold in the world, would not give their name to Cesarine de Thaller. It is strange; but it is so, dear mamma, and we must make up our mind to it.”

Then turning towards Marius, and bearing upon each syllable, as if afraid that the allusion might escape him,

“The men of whom I speak,” she added, “marry the girls who can starve to death.”

Knowing her daughter well enough to be aware that she could not impose silence upon her, the Baroness de Thaller had dropped upon a chair. She was trying hard to appear indifferent to what her daughter was saying; but at every moment a threatening gesture, or a hoarse exclamation, betrayed the storm that raged within her.

“Go on, poor foolish child!” she said,--“go on!”

And she did go on.

“Finally, were M. de Tregars willing to have me, I would refuse him myself, because, then--”

A fugitive blush colored her cheeks, her bold eyes vacillated, and, dropping her voice,

“Because, then,” she added, “he would no longer be what he is; because I feel that fatally I shall despise the husband whom papa will buy for me. And, if I came here to expose myself to an affront which I foresaw, it is because I wanted to make sure of a fact of which a word of Costeclar, a few days ago, had given me an idea, --of a fact which you do not, perhaps, suspect, dear mother, despite your astonishing perspicacity. I wanted to find out M. de Tregars’ secret; and I have found it out.”

M. de Tregars had come to the Thaller mansion with a plan well settled in advance. He had pondered long before deciding what he would do, and what he would say, and how he would begin the decisive struggle. What had taken place showed him the idleness of his conjectures, and, as a natural consequence, upset his plans. To abandon himself to the chances of the hour, and to make the best possible use of them, was now the wisest thing to do.

“Give me credit, mademoiselle,” he uttered, “for sufficient penetration to have perfectly well discerned your intentions. There was no need of artifice, because I have nothing to conceal. You had but to question me, I would have answered you frankly, ‘Yes, it is true I love Mlle. Gilberte; and before a month she will be Marquise de Tregars.’”

Mme. de Thaller, at those words, had started to her feet, pushing back her arm-chair so violently, that it rolled all the way to the wall.

“What!” she exclaimed, “you marry Gilberte Favoral,--you!”

“I--yes.”

“The daughter of a defaulting cashier, a dishonored man whom justice pursues and the galleys await!”

“Yes!” And in an accent that caused a shiver to run over the white shoulders of Mme. de Thaller,

“Whatever may have been,” he uttered, “Vincent Favoral’s crime; whether he has or has not stolen, the twelve millions which are wanting from the funds of the Mutual Credit; whether he is alone guilty, or has accomplices; whether he be a knave, or a fool, an impostor, or a dupe,--Mlle. Gilberte is not responsible.”

“You know the Favoral family, then?”

“Enough to make their cause henceforth my own.”

The agitation of the baroness was so great, that she did not even attempt to conceal it.

“A nobody’s daughter!” she said.

“I love her.”

“Without a sou!”

Mlle. Cesarine made a superb gesture.

“Why, that’s the very reason why a man may marry her!” she exclaimed, and, holding out her hand to M. de Tregars,

“What you do here is well,” she added, “very well.”

There was a wild look in the eyes of the baroness.

“Mad, unhappy child!” she exclaimed. “If your father should hear!”

“And who, then, would report our conversation to him? M. de Tregars? He would not do such a thing. You? You dare not.”

Drawing herself up to her fullest height, her breast swelling with anger, her head thrown back, her eyes flashing,

“Cesarine,” ordered Mme. de Thaller, her arm extended towards the door--“Cesarine, leave the room; I command you.”

But motionless in her place the girl cast upon her mother a look of defiance.

“Come, calm yourself,” she said in a tone of crushing irony, “or you’ll spoil your complexion for the rest of the evening. Do I complain? do I get excited? And yet whose fault is it, if honor makes it a duty for me to cry ‘Beware!’ to an honest man who wishes to marry me? That Gilberte should get married: that she should be very happy, have many children, darn her husband’s stockings, and skim her _pot-au-feu_,--that is her part in life. Ours, dear mother,--that which you have taught me--is to laugh and have fun, all the time, night and day, till death.”

A footman who came in interrupted her. Handing a card to Mme. de Thaller,

“The gentleman who gave it to me,” he said, “is in the large parlor.”

The baroness had become very pale.

“Oh!” she said turning the card between her fingers,--“oh!”

Then suddenly she ran out exclaiming,

“I’ll be back directly.”

An embarrassing, painful silence followed, as it was inevitable that it would, the Baroness de Thaller’s precipitate departure.

Mlle. Cesarine had approached the mantel-piece. She was leaning her elbow upon it, her forehead on her hand, all palpitating and excited. Intimidated for, perhaps, the first time in her life, she turned away her great blue eyes, as if afraid that they should betray a reflex of her thoughts.

As to M. de Tregars, he remained at his place, not having one whit too much of that power of self-control, which is acquired by a long experience of the world, to conceal his impressions. If he had a fault, it was certainly not self-conceit; but Mlle. de Thaller had been too explicit and too clear to leave him a doubt. All she had said could be comprised in one sentence,

“My parents were in hopes that I would become your wife: I had judged you well enough to understand their error. Precisely because I love you I acknowledge myself unworthy of you and I wish you to know that if you had asked my hand,--the hand of a girl who has a dowry of a million--I would have ceased to esteem you.”

That such a feeling should have budded and blossomed in Mlle. Cesarine’s soul, withered as it was by vanity, and blunted by pleasure was almost a miracle. It was, at any rate, an astonishing proof of love which she gave; and Marius de Tregars would not have been a man, if he had not been deeply moved by it. Suddenly,

“What a miserable wretch I am!” she uttered.

“You mean unhappy,” said M. de Tregars gently.

“What can you think of my sincerity? You must, doubtless, find it strange, impudent, grotesque.”

He lifted his hand in protest; for she gave him no time to put in a word.

“And yet,” she went on, “this is not the first time that I am assailed by sinister ideas, and that I feel ashamed of myself. I was convinced once that this mad existence of mine is the only enviable one, the only one that can give happiness. And now I discover that it is not the right path which I have taken, or, rather, which I have been made to take. And there is no possibility of retracing my steps.”

She turned pale, and, in an accent of gloomy despair,

“Every thing fails me,” she said. “It seems as though I were rolling into a bottomless abyss, without a branch or a tuft of grass to cling to. Around me, emptiness, night, chaos. I am not yet twenty and it seems to me that I have lived thousands of years, and exhausted every sensation. I have seen every thing, learned every thing, experienced every thing; and I am tired of every thing, and satiated and nauseated. You see me looking like a brainless hoyden, I sing, I jest, I talk slang. My gayety surprises everybody. In reality, I am literally tired to death. What I feel I could not express, there are no words to render absolute disgust. Sometimes I say to myself, ‘It is stupid to be so sad. What do you need? Are you not young, handsome, rich?’ But I must need something, or else I would not be thus agitated, nervous, anxious, unable to stay in one place, tormented by confused aspirations, and by desires which I cannot formulate. What can I do? Seek oblivion in pleasure and dissipation? I try, and I succeed for an hour or so; but the reaction comes, and the effect vanishes, like froth from champagne. The lassitude returns; and, whilst outwardly I continue to laugh, I shed within tears of blood which scald my heart. What is to become of me, without a memory in the past, or a hope in the future, upon which to rest my thought?”

And bursting into tears,

“Oh, I am wretchedly unhappy!” she exclaimed; “and I wish I was dead.”

M. de Tregars rose, feeling more deeply moved than he would, perhaps, have liked to acknowledge.

“I was laughing at you only a moment since,” he said in his grave and vibrating voice. “Pardon me, mademoiselle. It is with the utmost sincerity, and from the innermost depths of my soul, that I pity you.”

She was looking at him with an air of timid doubt, big tears trembling between her long eyelashes.

“Honest?” she asked.

“Upon my honor.”

“And you will not go with too poor an opinion of me?”

“I shall retain the firm belief that when you were yet but a child, you were spoiled by insane theories.”

Gently and sadly she was passing her hand over her forehead.

“Yes, that’s it,” she murmured. “How could I resist examples coming from certain persons? How could I help becoming intoxicated when I saw myself, as it were, in a cloud of incense when I heard nothing but praises and applause? And then there is the money, which depraves when it comes in a certain way.”

She ceased to speak; but the silence was soon again broken by a slight noise, which came from the adjoining room.

Mechanically, M. de Tregars looked around him. The little parlor in which he found himself was divided from the main drawing-room of the house by a tall and broad door, closed only by heavy curtains, which had remained partially drawn. Now, such was the disposition of the mirrors in the two rooms, that M. de Tregars could see almost the whole of the large one reflected in the mirror over the mantelpiece of the little parlor. A man of suspicious appearance, and wearing wretched clothes, was standing in it.

And, the more M. de Tregars examined him, the more it seemed to him that he had already seen somewhere that uneasy countenance, that anxious glance, that wicked smile flitting upon flat and thin lips.

But suddenly the man bowed very low. It was probable that Mme. de Thaller, who had gone around through the hall to reach the grand parlor, must be coming in; and in fact she almost immediately appeared within the range of the glass. She seemed much agitated; and, with a finger upon her lips, she was recommending to the man to be prudent, and to speak low. It was therefore in a whisper, and such a low whisper that not even a vague murmur reached the little parlor, that the man uttered a few words. They were such that the baroness started back as if she had seen a precipice yawning at her feet; and by this action it was easy to understand that she must have said,

“Is it possible?”

With the voice which still could not be heard, but with a gesture which could be seen, the man evidently replied,

“It is so, I assure you!”

And leaning towards Mme. de Thaller, who seemed in no wise shocked to feel this repulsive personage’s lips almost touching her ear, he began speaking to her.

The surprise which this species of vision caused to M. de Tregars was great, but did not keep him from reflecting what could be the meaning of this scene. How came this suspicious-looking man to have obtained access, without difficulty, into the grand parlor? Why had the baroness, on receiving his card, turned whiter than the laces on her dress? What news had he brought, which had made such a deep impression? What was he saying that seemed at once to terrify and to delight Mme. de Thaller?

But soon she interrupted the man, beckoned to him to wait, disappeared for a minute; and, when she came in again, she held in her hand a package of bank-notes, which she began counting upon the parlor-table.

She counted twenty-five, which, so far as M. de Tregars could judge, must have been hundred-franc notes. The man took them, counted them over, slipped them into his pocket with a grin of satisfaction, and then seemed disposed to retire.

The baroness detained him, however; and it was she now, who, leaning towards him, commenced to explain to him, or rather, as far as her attitude showed, to ask him something. It must have been a serious matter; for he shook his head, and moved his arms, as if he meant to say, “The deuse, the deuse!”

The strangest suspicions flashed across M. de Tregars’ mind. What was that bargain to which the mirror made him thus an accidental witness? For it was a bargain: there could be no mistake about it. The man, having received a mission, had fulfilled it, and had come to receive the price of it. And now a new commission was offered to him.

But M. de Tregars’ attention was now called off by Mlle. Cesarine. Shaking off the torpor which for a moment had overpowered her,

“But why fret and worry?” she said, answering, rather, the objections of her own mind than addressing herself to M. de Tregars. “Things are just as they are, and I cannot undo them.

“Ah! if the mistakes of life were like soiled clothes, which are allowed to accumulate in a wardrobe, and which are all sent out at once to the wash. But nothing washes the past, not even repentance, whatever they may say. There are some ideas which should be set aside. A prisoner should not allow himself to think of freedom.

“And yet,” she added, shrugging her shoulders, “a prisoner has always the hope of escaping; whereas I--” Then, making a visible effort to resume her usual manner,

“Bash!” she said, “that’s enough sentiment for one day; and instead of staying here, boring you to death, I ought to go and dress; for I am going to the opera with my sweet mamma, and afterwards to the ball. You ought to come. I am going to wear a stunning dress. The ball is at Mme. de Bois d’Ardon’s,--one of our friends, a progressive woman. She has a smoking-room for ladies. What do you think of that? Come, will you go? We’ll drink champagne, and we’ll laugh. No? Zut then, and my compliments to your family.”

But, at the moment of leaving the room, her heart failed her.

“This is doubtless the last time I shall ever see you, M. de Tregars,” she said. “Farewell! You know now why I, who have a dowry of a million, I envy Gilberte Favoral. Once more farewell. And, whatever happiness may fall to your lot in life, remember that Cesarine has wished it all to you.”

And she went out at the very moment when the Baroness de Thaller returned.

VII

“Cesarine!” Mme. de Thaller called, in a voice which sounded at once like a prayer and a threat.

“I am going to dress myself, mamma,” she answered.

“Come back!”

“So that you can scold me if I am not ready when you want to go? Thank you, no.”

“I command you to come back, Cesarine.”

No answer. She was far already.

Mme. de Thaller closed the door of the little parlor, and returning to take a seat by M. de Tregars,

“What a singular girl!” she said.

Meantime he was watching in the glass what was going on in the other room. The suspicious-looking man was there still, and alone. A servant had brought him pen, ink and paper; and he was writing rapidly.

“How is it that they leave him there alone?” wondered Marius.

And he endeavored to find upon the features of the baroness an answer to the confused presentiments which agitated his brain. But there was no longer any trace of the emotion which she had manifested when taken unawares. Having had time for reflection, she had composed for herself an impenetrable countenance. Somewhat surprised at M. de Tregars’ silence,

“I was saying,” she repeated, “that Cesarine is a strange girl.”

Still absorbed by the scene in the grand parlor,

“Strange, indeed!” he answered.

“And such is,” said the baroness with a sigh, “the result of M. de Thaller’s weakness, and above all of my own.

“We have no child but Cesarine; and it was natural that we should spoil her. Her fancy has been, and is still, our only law. She has never had time to express a wish: she is obeyed before she has spoken.”

She sighed again, and deeper than the first time. “You have just seen,” she went on, “the results of that insane education. And yet it would not do to trust appearances. Cesarine, believe me, is not as extravagant as she seems. She possesses solid qualities,--of those which a man expects of the woman who is to be his wife.”

Without taking his eyes off the glass,

“I believe you madame,” said M. de Tregars.

“With her father, with me especially, she is capricious, wilful, and violent; but, in the hands of the husband of her choice, she would be like wax in the hands of the modeler.”

The man in the parlor had finished his letter, and, with an equivocal smile, was reading it over.

“Believe me, madame,” replied M. de Tregars, “I have perfectly understood how much naive boasting there was in all that Mlle. Cesarine told me.”

“Then, really, you do not judge her too severely?”

“Your heart has not more indulgence for her than my own.”

“And yet it is from you that her first real sorrow comes.”

“From me?”

The baroness shook her head in a melancholy way, to convey an idea of her maternal affection and anxiety.

“Yes, from you, my dear marquis,” she replied, “from you alone. On the very day you entered this house, Cesarine’s whole nature changed.”

Having read his letter over, the man in the grand parlor had folded it, and slipped it into his pocket, and, having left his seat, seemed to be waiting for something. M. de Tregars was following, in the glass, his every motion, with the most eager curiosity. And nevertheless, as he felt the absolute necessity of saying something, were it only to avoid attracting the attention of the baroness,

“What!” he said, “Mlle. Cesarine’s nature did change, then?”

“In one night. Had she not met the hero of whom every girl dreams? --a man of thirty, bearing one of the oldest names in France.”

She stopped, expecting an answer, a word, an exclamation. But, as M. de Tregars said nothing,

“Did you never notice any thing then?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“And suppose I were to tell you myself, that my poor Cesarine, alas! --loves you?”

M. de Tregars started. Had he been less occupied with the personage in the grand parlor, he would certainly not have allowed the conversation to drift in this channel. He understood his mistake; and, in an icy tone,

“Permit me, madame,” he said, “to believe that you are jesting.”

“And suppose it were the truth.”

“It would make me unhappy in the extreme.”

“Sir!”

“For the reason which I have already told you, that I love Mlle. Gilberte Favoral with the deepest and the purest love, and that for the past three years she has been, before God, my affianced bride.”

Something like a flash of anger passed over Mme. de Thaller’s eyes.

“And I,” she exclaimed,--“I tell you that this marriage is senseless.”

“I wish it were still more so, that I might the better show to Gilberte how dear she is to me.”

Calm in appearance, the baroness was scratching with her nails the satin of the chair on which she was sitting.

“Then,” she went on, “your resolution is settled.”

“Irrevocably.”

“Still, now, come, between us who are no longer children, suppose M. de Thaller were to double Cesarine’s dowry, to treble it?”

An expression of intense disgust contracted the manly features of Marius de Tregars.

“Ah! not another word, madame,” he interrupted.

There was no hope left. Mme. de Thaller fully realized it by the tone in which he spoke. She remained pensive for over a minute, and suddenly, like a person who has finally made up her mind, she rang.

A footman appeared.

“Do what I told you!” she ordered.

And as soon as the footman had gone, turning to M. de Tregars,

“Alas!” she said, “who would have thought that I would curse the day when you first entered our house?”

But, whilst, she spoke, M. de Tregars noticed in the glass the result of the order she had just given.

The footman walked into the grand parlor, spoke a few words; and at once the man with the alarming countenance put on his hat and went out.

“This is very strange!” thought M. de Tregars. Meantime, the baroness was going on,

“If your intentions are to that point irrevocable, how is it that you are here? You have too much experience of the world not to have understood, this morning, the object of my visit and of my allusions.”

Fortunately, M. de Tregars’ attention was no longer drawn by the proceedings in the next room. The decisive moment had come: the success of the game he was playing would, perhaps, depend upon his coolness and self-command.

“It is because I did understand, madame, and even better than you suppose, that I am here.”

“Indeed!”

“I came, expecting to deal with M. de Thaller alone. I have been compelled, by what has happened, to alter my intentions. It is to you that I must speak first.”

Mme. de Thaller continued to manifest the same tranquil assurance; but she stood up. Feeling the approach of the storm, she wished to be up, and ready to meet it.

“You honor me,” she said with an ironical smile.

There was, henceforth, no human power capable of turning Marius de Tregars from the object he had in view.

“It is to you I shall speak,” he repeated, “because, after you have heard me, you may perhaps judge that it is your interest to join me in endeavoring to obtain from your husband what I ask, what I demand, what I must have.”

With an air of surprise marvelously well simulated, if it was not real, the baroness was looking at him.

“My father,” he proceeded to say, “the Marquis de Tregars, was once rich: he had several millions. And yet when I had the misfortune of losing him, three years ago, he was so thoroughly ruined, that to relieve the scruples of his honor, and to make his death easier, I gave up to his creditors all I had in the world. What had become of my father’s fortune? What filter had been administered to him to induce him to launch into hazardous speculations,--he an old Breton gentleman, full, even to absurdity, of the most obstinate prejudices of the nobility? That’s what I wished to ascertain.

“And now, madame, I--have ascertained.”

She was a strong-minded woman, the Baroness de Thaller. She had had so many adventures in her life, she had walked on the very edge of so many precipices, concealed so many anxieties, that danger was, as it were, her element, and that, at the decisive moment of an almost desperate game, she could remain smiling like those old gamblers whose face never betrays their terrible emotion at the moment when they risk their last stake. Not a muscle of her face moved; and it was with the most imperturbable calm that she said,

“Go on, I am listening: it must be quite interesting.”

That was not the way to propitiate M. de Tregars. He resumed, in a brief and harsh tone,

“When my father died, I was young. I did not know then what I have learned since,--that to contribute to insure the impunity of knaves is almost to make one’s self their accomplice. And the victim who says nothing and submits, does contribute to it. The honest man, on the contrary, should speak, and point out to others the trap into which he has fallen, that they may avoid it.”

The baroness was listening with the air of a person who is compelled by politeness to hear a tiresome story.

“That is a rather gloomy preamble,” she said. M. de Tregars took no notice of the interruption.

“At all times,” he went on, “my father seemed careless of his affairs: that affectation, he thought, was due to the name he bore. But his negligence was only apparent. I might mention things of him that would do honor to the most methodical tradesman. He had, for instance, the habit of preserving all the letters of any importance which he received. He left twelve or fifteen boxes full of such. They were carefully classified; and many bore upon their margin a few notes indicating what answer had been made to them.”

Half suppressing a yawn,

“That is order,” said the baroness, “if I know any thing about it.”

“At the first moment, determined not to stir up the past, I attached no importance to those letters; and they would certainly have been burnt, but for an old friend of the family, the Count de Villegre, who had them carried to his own house. But later, acting under the influence of circumstances which it would be too long to explain to you, I regretted my apathy; and I thought that I should, perhaps, find in that correspondence something to either dissipate or justify certain suspicions which had occurred to me.”

“So that, like a respectful son, you read it?” M. de Tregars bowed ceremoniously.

“I believe,” he said, “that to avenge a father of the imposture of which he was the victim during his life, is to render homage to his memory. Yes, madame, I read the whole of that correspondence, and with an interest which you will readily understand. I had already, and without result, examined the contents of several boxes, when in the package marked 1852, a year which my father spent in Paris, certain letters attracted my attention. They were written upon coarse paper, in a very primitive handwriting and wretchedly spelt. They were signed sometimes Phrasie, sometimes Marquise de Javelle. Some gave the address, ‘Rue des Bergers, No. 3, Paris-Grenelle.’

“Those letters left me no doubt upon what had taken place. My father had met a young working-girl of rare beauty: he had taken a fancy to her; and, as he was tormented by the fear of being loved for his money alone, he had passed himself off for a poor clerk in one of the departments.”

“Quite a touching little love-romance,” remarked the baroness.

But there was no impertinence that could affect Marius de Tregars’ coolness.

“A romance, perhaps,” he said, “but in that case a money-romance, not a love-romance. This Phrasie or Marquise de Javelle, announces in one of her letters, that in February, 1853, she has given birth to a daughter, whom she has confided to some relatives of hers in the south, near Toulouse. It was doubtless that event which induced my father to acknowledge who he was. He confesses that he is not a poor clerk, but the Marquis de Tregars, having an income of over a hundred thousand francs. At once the tone of the correspondence changes. The Marquise de Javelle has a stupid time where she lives; the neighbors reproach her with her fault; work spoils her pretty hands. Result: less than two weeks after the birth of her daughter, my father hires for his pretty mistress a lovely apartment, which she occupies under the name of Mme. Devil; she is allowed fifteen hundred francs a month, servants, horses, carriage.”

Mme. de Thaller was giving signs of the utmost impatience. Without paying any attention to them, M. de Tregars proceeded,

“Henceforth free to see each other daily, my father and his mistress cease to write. But Mme. Devil does not waste her time. During a space of less than eight months, from February to September, she induces my father to dispose--not in her favor, she is too disinterested for that, but in favor of her daughter--of a sum exceeding five hundred thousand francs. In September, the correspondence is resumed. Mme. Devil discovers that she is not happy, and acknowledges it in a letter, which shows, by its improved writing and more correct spelling, that she has been taking lessons.

“She complains of her precarious situation: the future frightens her: she longs for respectability. Such is, for three months, the constant burden of her correspondence. She regrets the time when she was a working girl: why has she been so weak? Then, at last, in a note which betrays long debates and stormy discussions, she announces that she has an unexpected offer of marriage; a fine fellow, who, if she only had two hundred thousand francs, would give his name to herself and to her darling little daughter. For a long time my father hesitates; but she presses her point with such rare skill, she demonstrates so conclusively that this marriage will insure the happiness of their child, that my father yields at last, and resigns himself to the sacrifice. And in a memorandum on the margin of a last letter, he states that he has just given two hundred thousand francs to Mme. Devil; that he will never see her again; and that he returns to live in Brittany, where he wishes, by the most rigid economy, to repair the breach he has just made in his fortune.”

“Thus end all these love-stories,” said Mme. de Thaller in a jesting tone.

“I beg your pardon: this one is not ended yet. For many years, my father kept his word, and never left our homestead of Tregars. But at last he grew tired of his solitude, and returned to Paris. Did he seek to see his former mistress again? I think not. I suppose that chance brought them together; or else, that, being aware of his return, she managed to put herself in his way. He found her more fascinating than ever, and, according to what she wrote him, rich and respected; for her husband had become a personage. She would have been perfectly happy, she added, had it been possible for her to forget the man whom she had once loved so much, and to whom she owed her position.

“I have that letter. The elegant hand, the style, and the correct orthography, express better than any thing else the transformations of the Marquise de Javelle. Only it is not signed. The little working-girl has become prudent: she has much to lose, and fears to compromise herself.

“A week later, in a laconic note, apparently dictated by an irresistible passion, she begs my father to come to see her at her own house. He does so, and finds there a little girl, whom he believes to be his own child, and whom he at once begins to idolize.

“And that’s all. Again he falls under the charm. He ceases to belong to himself: his former mistress can dispose, at her pleasure, of his fortune and of his fate.

“But see now what bad luck! The husband takes a notion to become jealous of my father’s visits. In a letter which is a masterpiece of diplomacy, the lady explains her anxiety.

“‘He has suspicions,’ she writes; ‘and to what extremities might he not resort, were he to discover the truth!’ And with infinite art she insinuates that the best way to justify his constant presence is to associate himself with that jealous husband.

“It is with childish haste that my father jumps at the suggestion. But money is needed. He sells his lands, and everywhere announces that he has great financial ideas, and that he is going to increase his fortune tenfold.

“There he is now, partner of his former mistress’s husband, engaged in speculations, director of a company. He thinks that he is doing an excellent business: he is convinced that he is making lots of money. Poor honest man! They prove to him, one morning, that he is ruined, and, what is more, compromised. And this is made to look so much like the truth, that I interfere myself, and pay the creditors. We were ruined; but honor was safe. A few weeks later, my father died broken-hearted.”

Mme. de Thaller half rose from her seat with a gesture which indicated the joy of escaping at last a merciless bore. A glance from M. de Tregars riveted her to her seat, freezing upon her lips the jest she was about to utter.

“I have not done yet,” he said rudely.

And, without suffering any interruption,

“From this correspondence,” he resumed, “resulted the flagrant, irrefutable proof of a shameful intrigue, long since suspected by my old friend, General Count de Villegre. It became evident to me that my poor father had been most shamefully imposed upon by that mistress, so handsome and so dearly loved, and, later, despoiled by the husband of that mistress. But all this availed me nothing. Being ignorant of my father’s life and connections, the letters giving neither a name nor a precise detail, I knew not whom to accuse. Besides, in order to accuse, it is necessary to have, at least, some material proof.”

The baroness had resumed her seat; and every thing about her--her attitude, her gestures, the motion of her lips--seemed to say,

“You are my guest. Civility has its demands; but really you abuse your privileges.”

M. de Tregars went on,

“At this moment I was still a sort of savage, wholly absorbed in my experiments, and scarcely ever setting foot outside my laboratory. I was indignant; I ardently wished to find and to punish the villains who had robbed us: but I knew not how to go about it, nor in what direction to seek information. The wretches would, perhaps, have gone unpunished, but for a good and worthy man, now a commissary of police, to whom I once rendered a slight service, one night, in a riot, when he was close pressed by some half-dozen rascals. I explained the situation to him: he took much interest in it, promised his assistance, and marked out my line of conduct.”

Mme. de Thaller seemed restless upon her seat.

“I must confess,” she began, “that I am not wholly mistress of my time. I am dressed, as you see: I have to go out.”

If she had preserved any hope of adjourning the explanation which she felt coming, she must have lost it when she heard the tone in which M. de Tregars interrupted her.

“You can go out to-morrow.”

And, without hurrying,

“Advised, as I have just told you,” he continued, “and assisted by the experience of a professional man, I went first to No. 3, Rue des Bergers, in Grenelle. I found there some old people, the foreman of a neighboring factory and his wife, who had been living in the house for nearly twenty-five years. At my first question, they exchanged a glance, and commenced laughing. They remembered perfectly the Marquise de Javelle, which was but a nickname for a young and pretty laundress, whose real name was Euphrasie Taponnet. She had lived for eighteen months on the same landing as themselves: she had a lover, who passed himself off for a clerk, but who was, in fact, she had told them, a very wealthy nobleman. They added that she had given birth to a little girl, and that, two weeks later she had disappeared, and they had never heard a word from her. When I left them, they said to me, ‘If you see Phrasie, ask her if she ever knew old Chandour and his wife. I am sure she’ll remember us.’”

For the first time Mme. de Thaller shuddered slightly; but it was almost imperceptible.

“From Grenelle,” continued M. de Tregars, “I went to the house where my father’s mistress had lived under the name of Mme. Devil. I was in luck. I found there the same concierge as in 1853. As soon as I mentioned Mme. Devil, she answered me that she had not in the least forgotten her, but, on the contrary, would know her among a thousand. She was, she said, one of the prettiest little women she had ever seen, and the most generous tenant. I understood the hint, handed her a couple of napoleons, and heard from her every thing she knew on the subject. It seemed that this pretty Mme. Devil had, not one lover, but two,--the acknowledged one, who was the master, and footed the bills; and the other an anonymous one, who went out through the back-stairs, and who did not pay, on the contrary. The first was called the Marquis de Tregars: of the second, she had never known but the first name, Frederic. I tried to ascertain what had become of Mme. Devil; but the worthy concierge swore to me that she did not know.

“One morning, like a person who is going abroad, or who wishes to cover up her tracks, Mme. Devil had sent for a furniture-dealer, and a dealer in second-hand clothes, and had sold them every thing she had, going away with nothing but a little leather satchel, in which were her jewels and her money.”

The Baroness de Thaller still kept a good countenance. After examining her for a moment, with a sort of eager curiosity, Marius de Tregars went on,

“When I communicated this information to my friend, the commissary of police, he shook his head. ‘Two years ago,’ he told me, ‘I would have said, that’s more than we want to find those people; for the public records would have given us at once the key of this enigma. But we have had the war and the Commune; and the books of record have been burnt up. Still we must not give up. A last hope remains; and I know the man who is capable of realizing it.’

“Two days after, he brought me an excellent fellow, named Victor Chupin, in whom I could have entire confidence; for he was recommended to me by one of the men whom I like and esteem the most, the Duke de Champdoce. Giving up all idea of applying at the various mayors’ offices, Victor Chupin, with the patience and the tenacity of an Indian following a scent, began beating about the districts of Grenelle, Vargirard, and the Invalids. And not in vain; for, after a week of investigations he brought me a nurse, residing Rue de l’Universite, who remembered perfectly having once attended, on the occasion of her confinement, a remarkably pretty young woman, living in the Rue des Bergers, and nicknamed the Marquise de Javelle. And as she was a very orderly woman, who at all times had kept a very exact account of her receipts, she brought me a little book in which I read this entry: ‘For attending Euphrasie Taponnet, alias the Marquise de Javelle (a girl), one hundred francs.’ And this is not all. This woman informed me, moreover, that she had been requested to present the child at the mayor’s office, and that she had been duly registered there under the names of Euphrasie Cesarine Taponnet, born of Euphrasie Taponnet, laundress, and an unknown father. Finally she placed at my disposal her account-book and her testimony.”

Taxed beyond measure, the energy of the baroness was beginning to fail her; she was turning livid under her rice-powder. Still in the same icy tone,

“You can understand, madame,” said Marius de Tregars, “that this woman’s testimony, together with the letters which are in my possession, enables me to establish before the courts the exact date of the birth of a daughter whom my father had of his mistress. But that’s nothing yet. With renewed zeal, Victor Chupin had resumed his investigations. He had undertaken the examination of the marriage-registers in all the parishes of Paris, and, as early as the following week, he discovered at Notre Dame des Lorettes the entry of the marriage of Euphrasie Taponnet with Frederic de Thaller.”

Though she must have expected that name, the baroness started up violently and livid, and with a haggard look.

“It’s false!” she began in a choking voice.

A smile of ironical pity passed over Marius’ lips.

“Five minutes’ reflection will prove to you that it is useless to deny,” he interrupted. “But wait. In the books of that same church, Victor Chupin has found registered the baptism of a daughter of M. and Mme de Thaller, bearing the same names as the first one, --Euphrasie Cesarine.”

With a convulsive motion the baroness shrugged her shoulder.

“What does all that prove?” she said.

“That proves, madame, the well-settled intention of substituting one child for another; that proves that my father was imprudently deceived when he was made to believe that the second Cesarine was his daughter, the daughter in whose favor he had formerly disposed of over five hundred thousand francs; that proves that there is somewhere in the world a poor girl who has been basely forsaken by her mother, the Marquise de Javelle, now become the Baroness de Thaller.”

Beside herself with terror and anger,

“That is an infamous lie!” exclaimed the baroness. M. de Tregars bowed.

“The evidence of the truth of my statements,” he said, “I shall find at Louveciennes, and at the Hotel des Folies, Boulevard du Temple, Paris.”

Night had come. A footman came in carrying lamps, which he placed upon the mantelpiece. He was not all together one minute in the little parlor; but that one minute was enough to enable the Marquise de Thaller to recover her coolness, and to collect her ideas. When the footman retired, she had made up her mind, with the resolute promptness of a person accustomed to perilous situations. She gave up the discussion, and, drawing near to M. de Tregars,

“Enough allusions,” she said: “let us speak frankly, and face to face now. What do you want?”

But the change was too sudden not to arouse Marius’s suspicions.

“I want a great many things,” he replied.

“Still you must specify.”

“Well, I claim first the five hundred thousand francs which my father had settled upon his daughter,--the daughter whom you cast off.”

“And what next?”

“I want besides, my own and my father’s fortune, of which we have been robbed by M. de Thaller, with your assistance, madame.”

“Is that all, at least?”

M. de Tregars shook his head.

“That’s nothing yet,” he replied.

“Oh!”

“We have now to say something of Vincent Favoral’s affairs.”

An attorney who is defending the interests of a client is neither calmer nor cooler than Mme. de Thaller at this moment.

“Do the affairs of my husband’s cashier concern me, then?” she said with a shade of irony.

“Yes, madame, very much.”

“I am glad to hear it.”

“I know it from excellent sources, because, on my return from Louveciennes, I called in the Rue du Cirque, where I saw one Zelie Cadelle.”

He thought that the baroness would at least start on hearing that name. Not at all. With a look of profound astonishment,

“Rue du Cirque,” she repeated, like a person who is making a prodigious effort of memory,--“Rue du Cirque! Zelie Cadelle! Really, I do not understand.”

But, from the glance which M. de Tregars cast upon her, she must have understood that she would not easily draw from him the particulars which he had resolved not to tell.

“I believe, on the contrary,” he uttered, “that you understand perfectly.”

“Be it so, if you insist upon it. What do you ask for Favoral?”

“I demand, not for Favoral, but for the stockholders who have been impudently defrauded, the twelve millions which are missing from the funds of the Mutual Credit.”

Mme. de Thaller burst out laughing.

“Only that?” she said.

“Yes, only that!”

“Well, then, it seems to me that you should present your reclamations to M. Favoral himself. You have the right to run after him.”

“It is useless, for the reason that it is not he, the poor fool! who has carried off the twelve millions.”

“Who is it, then?”

“M. le Baron de Thaller, no doubt.”

With that accent of pity which one takes to reply to an absurd proposition,--“You are mad, my poor marquis,” said Mme. de Thaller.

“You do not think so.”

“But suppose I should refuse to do any thing more?”

He fixed upon her a glance in which she could read an irrevocable determination; and slowly,

“I have a perfect horror of scandal,” he replied, “and, as you perceive, I am trying to arrange every thing quietly between us. But, if I do not succeed thus, I must appeal to the courts.”

“Where are your proofs?”

“Don’t be afraid: I have proofs to sustain all my allegations.”

The baroness had stretched herself comfortably in her arm-chair.

“May we know them?” she inquired.

Marius was getting somewhat uneasy in presence of Mme. de Thaller’s imperturbable assurance. What hope had she? Could she see some means of escape from a situation apparently so desperate? Determined to prove to her that all was lost, and that she had nothing to do but to surrender,

“Oh! I know, madame,” he replied, “that you have taken your precautions. But, when Providence interferes, you see, human foresight does not amount to much. See, rather, what happens in regard to your first daughter,--the one you had when you were still only Marquise de Javelle.”

And briefly he called to her mind the principal incidents of Mlle. Lucienne’s life from the time that she had left her with the poor gardeners at Louveciennes, without giving either her name or her address,--the injury she had received by being run over by Mme. de Thaller’s carriage; the long letter she had written from the hospital, begging for assistance; her visit to the house, and her meeting with the Baron de Thaller; the effort to induce her to emigrate to America; her arrest by means of false information, and her escape, thanks to the kind peace-officer; the attempt upon her as she was going home late one night; and, finally, her imprisonment after the Commune, among the _petroleuses_, and her release through the interference of the same honest friend.

And, charging her with the responsibility of all these infamous acts, he paused for an answer or a protest.

And, as Mme. de Thaller said nothing,

“You are looking at me, madame, and wondering how I have discovered all that. A single word will explain it all. The peace-officer who saved your daughter is precisely the same to whom it was once my good fortune to render a service. By comparing notes, we have gradually reached the truth,--reached you, madame. Will you acknowledge now that I have more proofs than are necessary to apply to the courts?”

Whether she acknowledged it or not, she did not condescend to discuss.

“What then?” she said coldly.

But M. de Tregars was too much on his guard to expose himself, by continuing to speak thus, to reveal the secret of his designs.

Besides, whilst he was thoroughly satisfied as to the manoeuvres used to defraud his father he had, as yet, but presumptions on what concerned Vincent Favoral.

“Permit me not to say another word, madame,” he replied. “I have told you enough to enable you to judge of the value of my weapons.”

She must have felt that she could not make him change his mind, for she rose to go.

“That is sufficient,” she uttered. “I shall reflect; and to-morrow I shall give you an answer.”

She started to go; but M. de Tregars threw himself quickly between her and the door.

“Excuse me,” he said; “but it is not to-morrow that I want an answer: it is to-night, this instant!”

Ah, if she could have annihilated him with a look.

“Why, this is violence,” she said in a voice which betrayed the incredible effort she was making to control herself.

“It is imposed upon me by circumstances, madame.”

“You would be less exacting, if my husband were here.”

He must have been within hearing; for suddenly the door opened, and he appeared upon the threshold. There are people for whom the unforeseen does not exist, and whom no event can disconcert. Having ventured every thing, they expect every thing. Such was the Baron de Thaller. With a sagacious glance he examined his wife and M. de Tregars; and in a cordial tone,

“We are quarreling here?” he said.

“I am glad you have come!” exclaimed the baroness.

“What is the matter?”

“The matter is, that M. de Tregars is endeavoring to take an odious advantage of some incidents of our past life.”

“There’s woman’s exaggeration for you!” he said laughing.

And, holding out his hand to Marius,

“Let me make your peace--for you, my dear marquis,” he said: “that’s within the province of the husband.” But, instead of taking his extended hand, M. de Tregars stepped back.

“There is no more peace possible, sir, I am an enemy.”

“An enemy!” he repeated in a tone of surprise which was wonderfully well assumed, if it was not real.

“Yes,” interrupted the baroness; “and I must speak to you at once, Frederic. Come: M. de Tregars will wait for you.”

And she led her husband into the adjoining room, not without first casting upon Marius a look of burning and triumphant hatred.

Left alone, M. de Tregars sat down. Far from annoying him, this sudden intervention of the manager of the Mutual Credit seemed to him a stroke of fortune. It spared him an explanation more painful still than the first, and the unpleasant necessity of having to confound a villain by proving his infamy to him.

“And besides,” he thought, “when the husband and the wife have consulted with each other, they will acknowledge that they cannot resist, and that it is best to surrender.” The deliberation was brief. In less than ten minutes, M. de Thaller returned alone. He was pale; and his face expressed well the grief of an honest man who discovers too late that he has misplaced his confidence.

“My wife has told me all, sir,” he began.

M. de Tregars had risen. “Well?” he asked.

“You see me distressed. Ah, M. le Marquis! how could I ever expect such a thing from you?--you, whom I thought I had the right to look upon as a friend. And it is you, who, when a great misfortune befalls me, attempts to give me the finishing stroke. It is you who would crush me under the weight of slanders gathered in the gutter.”

M. de Tregars stopped him with a gesture.

“Mme. de Thaller cannot have correctly repeated my words to you, else you would not utter that word ‘slander.’”

“She has repeated them to me without the least change.”

“Then she cannot have told you the importance of the proofs I have in my hands.”

But the Baron persisted, as Mlle. Cesarine would have said, to “do it up in the tender style.”

“There is scarcely a family,” he resumed, “in which there is not some one of those painful secrets which they try to withhold from the wickedness of the world. There is one in mine. Yes, it is true, that before our marriage, my wife had had a child, whom poverty had compelled her to abandon. We have since done everything that was humanly possible to find that child, but without success. It is a great misfortune, which has weighed upon our life; but it is not a crime. If, however, you deem it your interest to divulge our secret, and to disgrace a woman, you are free to do so: I cannot prevent you. But I declare it to you, that fact is the only thing real in your accusations. You say that your father has been duped and defrauded. From whom did you get such an idea?

“From Marcolet, doubtless, a man without character, who has become my mortal enemy since the day when he tried a sharp game on me, and came out second best. Or from Costeclar, perhaps, who does not forgive me for having refused him my daughter’s hand, and who hates me because I know that he committed forgery once, and that he would be in prison but for your father’s extreme indulgence. Well, Costeclar and Marcolet have deceived you. If the Marquis de Tregars ruined himself, it is because he undertook a business that he knew nothing about, and speculated right and left. It does not take long to sink a fortune, even without the assistance of thieves.

“As to pretend that I have benefitted by the embezzlements of my cashier that is simply stupid; and there can be no one to suggest such a thing, except Jottras and Saint Pavin, two scoundrels whom I have had ten times the opportunity to send to prison and who were the accomplices of Favoral. Besides, the matter is in the hands of justice; and I shall prove in the broad daylight of the court-room, as I have already done in the office of the examining judge, that, to save the Mutual Credit, I have sacrificed more than half my private fortune.”

Tired of this speech, the evident object of which was to lead him to discuss, and to betray himself,

“Conclude, sir,” M. de Tregars interrupted harshly. Still in the same placid tone,

“To conclude is easy enough,” replied the baron. “My wife has told me that you were about to marry the daughter of my old cashier,--a very handsome girl, but without a sou. She ought to have a dowry.”

“Sir!”

“Let us show our hands. I am in a critical position: you know it, and you are trying to take advantage of it. Very well: we can still come to an understanding. What would you say, if I were to give to Mlle. Gilberte the dowry I intended for my daughter?”

All M. de Tregars’ blood rushed to his face.

“Ah, not another word!” he exclaimed with a gesture of unprecedented violence. But, controlling himself almost at once,

“I demand,” he added, “my father’s fortune. I demand that you should restore to the Mutual Credit Company the twelve millions which have been abstracted.”

“And if not?”

“Then I shall apply to the courts.”

They remained for a moment face to face, looking into each other’s eyes. Then,

“What have you decided?” asked M. de Tregars.

Without perhaps, suspecting that his offer was a new insult,

“I will go as far as fifteen hundred thousand francs,” replied M. de Thaller, “and I pay cash.”

“Is that your last word?”

“It is.”

“If I enter a complaint, with the proofs in my hands, you are lost.”

“We’ll see about that.”

To insist further would have been puerile.

“Very well, we’ll see, then,” said M. de Tregars. But as he walked out and got into his cab, which had been waiting for him at the door, he could not help wondering what gave the Baron de Thaller so much assurance, and whether he was not mistaken in his conjectures.

It was nearly eight o’clock, and Maxence, Mme. Favoral and Mlle. Gilberte must have been waiting for him with a feverish impatience; but he had eaten nothing since morning, and he stopped in front of one of the restaurants of the Boulevard.

He had just ordered his dinner, when a gentleman of a certain age, but active and vigorous still, of military bearing, wearing a mustache, and a tan-colored ribbon at his buttonhole, came to take a seat at the adjoining table.

In less than fifteen minutes M. de Tregars had despatched a bowl of soup and a slice of beef, and was hastening out, when his foot struck his neighbor’s foot, without his being able to understand how it had happened.

Though fully convinced that it was not his fault, he hastened to excuse himself. But the other began to talk angrily, and so loud, that everybody turned around.

Vexed as he was, Marius renewed his apologies.

But the other, like those cowards who think they have found a greater coward than themselves, was pouring forth a torrent of the grossest insults.

M. de Tregars was lifting his hand to administer a well-deserved correction, when suddenly the scene in the grand parlor of the Thaller mansion came back vividly to his mind. He saw again, as in the glass, the ill-looking man listening, with an anxious look, to Mme. de Thaller’s propositions, and afterwards sitting down to write.

“That’s it!” he exclaimed, a multitude of circumstances occurring to his mind, which had escaped him at the moment.

And, without further reflection, seizing his adversary by the throat, he threw him over on the table, holding him down with his knee.

“I am sure he must have the letter about him,” he said to the people who surrounded him.

And in fact he did take from the side-pocket of the villain a letter, which he unfolded, and commenced reading aloud,

“I am waiting for you, my dear major, come quick, for the thing is pressing,--a troublesome gentleman who is to be made to keep quiet. It will be for you the matter of a sword-thrust, and for us the occasion to divide a round amount.”

“And, that’s why he picked a quarrel with me,” added M. de Tregars.

Two waiters had taken hold of the villain, who was struggling furiously, and wanted to surrender him to the police.

“What’s the use?” said Marius. “I have his letter: that’s enough. The police will find him when they want him.”

And, getting back into his cab,

“Rue St. Gilles,” he ordered, “and lively, if possible.”

VIII

In the Rue St. Gilles the hours were dragging, slow and gloomy. After Maxence had left to go and meet M. de Tregars, Mme. Favoral and her daughter had remained alone with M. Chapelain, and had been compelled to bear the brunt of his wrath, and to hear his interminable complaints.

He was certainly an excellent man, that old lawyer, and too just to hold Mlle. Gilberte or her mother responsible for Vincent Favoral’s acts. He spoke the truth when he assured them that he had for them a sincere affection, and that they might rely upon his devotion. But he was losing a hundred and sixty thousand francs; and a man who loses such a large sum is naturally in bad humor, and not much disposed to optimism.

The cruellest enemies of the poor women would not have tortured them so mercilessly as this devoted friend.

He spared them not one sad detail of that meeting at the Mutual Credit office, from which he had just come. He exaggerated the proud assurance of the manager, and the confiding simplicity of the stockholders. “That Baron de Thaller,” he said to them, “is certainly the most impudent scoundrel and the cleverest rascal I have ever seen. You’ll see that he’ll get out of it with clean hands and full pockets. Whether or not he has accomplices, Vincent will be the scapegoat. We must make up our mind to that.”

His positive intention was to console Mme. Favoral and Gilberte. Had he sworn to drive them to distraction, he could not have succeeded better.

“Poor woman!” he said, “what is to become of you? Maxence is a good and honest fellow, I am sure, but so weak, so thoughtless, so fond of pleasure! He finds it difficult enough to get along by himself. Of what assistance will he be to you?”

Then came advice.

Mme. Favoral, he declared, should not hesitate to ask for a separation, which the tribunal would certainly grant. For want of this precaution, she would remain all her life under the burden of her husband’s debts, and constantly exposed to the annoyances of the creditors.

And always he wound up by saying,

“Who could ever have expected such a thing from Vincent,--a friend of twenty years’ standing! A hundred and sixty thousand francs! Who in the world can be trusted hereafter?”

Big tears were rolling slowly down Mme. Favoral’s withered cheeks. But Mlle. Gilberte was of those for whom the pity of others is the worst misfortune and the most acute suffering.

Twenty times she was on the point of exclaiming,

“Keep your compassion, sir: we are neither so much to be pitied nor so much forsaken as you think. Our misfortune has revealed to us a true friend,--one who does not speak, but acts.”

At last, as twelve o’clock struck, M. Chapelain withdrew, announcing that he would return the next day to get the news, and to bring further consolation.

“Thank Heaven, we are alone at last!” said Mlle. Gilberte.

But they had not much peace, for all that.

Great as had been the noise of Vincent Favoral’s disaster, it had not reached at once all those who had intrusted their savings to him. All day long, the belated creditors kept coming in; and the scenes of the morning were renewed on a smaller scale. Then legal summonses began to pour in, three or four at a time. Mme. Favoral was losing all courage.

“What disgrace!” she groaned. “Will it always be so hereafter?”

And she exhausted herself in useless conjectures upon the causes of the catastrophe; and such was the disorder of her mind, that she knew not what to hope and what to fear, and that from one minute to another she wished for the most contradictory things.

She would have been glad to hear that her husband was safe out of the country, and yet she would have deemed herself less miserable, had she known that he was hid somewhere in Paris.

And obstinately the same questions returned to her lips,

“Where is he now? What is he doing? What is he thinking about? How can he leave us without news? Is it possible that it is a woman who has driven him into the precipice? And, if so, who is that woman?”

Very different were Mlle. Gilberte’s thoughts.

The great calamity that befell her family had brought about the sudden realization of her hopes. Her father’s disaster had given her an opportunity to test the man she loved; and she had found him even superior to all that she could have dared to dream. The name of Favoral was forever disgraced; but she was going to be the wife of Marius, Marquise de Tregars.

And, in the candor of her loyal soul, she accused herself of not taking enough interest in her mother’s grief, and reproached herself for the quivers of joy which she felt within her.

“Where is Maxence?” asked Mme. Favoral.

“Where is M. de Tregars? Why have they told us nothing of their projects?”

“They will, no doubt, come home to dinner,” replied Mlle. Gilberte.

So well was she convinced of this, that she had given orders to the servant to have a somewhat better dinner than usual; and her heart was beating at the thought of being seated near Marius, between her mother and her brother.

At about six o’clock, the bell rang violently.

“There he is!” said the young girl, rising to her feet.

But no: it was only the porter, bringing up a summons ordering Mme. Favoral, under penalty of the law, to appear the next day, at one o’clock precisely, before the examining judge, Barban d’Avranchel, at his office in the Palace of Justice.

The poor woman came near fainting.

“What can this judge want with me? It ought to be forbidden to call a wife to testify against her husband,” she said.

“M. de Tregars will tell you what to answer, mamma,” said Mlle. Gilberte.

Meantime, seven o’clock came, then eight, and still neither Maxence nor M. de Tregars had come.

Both mother and daughter were becoming anxious, when at last, a little before nine, they heard steps in the hall.

Marius de Tregars appeared almost immediately.

He was pale; and his face bore the trace of the crushing fatigues of the day, of the cares which oppressed him, of the reflections which had been suggested to his mind by the quarrel of which he had nearly been the victim a few moments since.

“Maxence is not here?” he asked at once.

“We have not seen him,” answered Mlle. Gilberte.

He seemed so much surprised, that Mme. Favoral was frightened.

“What is the matter again, good God!” she exclaimed.

“Nothing, madame,” said M. de Tregars,--“nothing that should alarm you. Compelled, about two hours ago, to part from Maxence, I was to have met him here. Since he has not come, he must have been detained. I know where; and I will ask your permission to run and join him.”

He went out; but Mlle. Gilberte followed him in the hall, and, taking his hand,

“How kind of you!” she began, “and how can we ever sufficiently thank you?”

He interrupted her.

“You owe me no thanks, my beloved; for, in what I am doing, there is more selfishness than you think. It is my own cause, more than yours, that I am defending. Any way, every thing is going on well.”

And, without giving any more explanations, he started again. He had no doubt that Maxence, after leaving him, had run to the Hotel des Folies to give to Mlle. Lucienne an account of the day’s work. And, though somewhat annoyed that he had tarried so long, on second thought, he was not surprised.

It was, therefore, to the Hotel des Folies that he was going. Now that he had unmasked his batteries and begun the struggle, he was not sorry to meet Mlle. Lucienne.

In less than five minutes he had reached the Boulevard du Temple. In front of the Fortins’ narrow corridor a dozen idlers were standing, talking.

M. de Tregars was listening as he went along.

“It is a frightful accident,” said one,--“such a pretty girl, and so young too!”

“As to me,” said another, “it is the driver that I pity the most; for after all, if that pretty miss was in that carriage, it was for her own pleasure; whereas, the poor coachman was only attending to his business.”

A confused presentiment oppressed M. de Tregars’ heart. Addressing himself to one of those worthy citizens,

“Have you heard any particulars?”

Flattered by the confidence,

“Certainly I have,” he replied. “I didn’t see the thing with my own proper eyes; but my wife did. It was terrible. The carriage, a magnificent private carriage too, came from the direction of the Madeleine. The horses had run away; and already there had been an accident in the Place du Chateau d’Eau, where an old woman had been knocked down. Suddenly, here, over there, opposite the toy-shop, which is mine, by the way, the wheel of the carriage catches into the wheel of an enormous truck; and at once, palata! the coachman is thrown down, and so is the lady, who was inside,--a very pretty girl, who lives in this hotel.”

Leaving there the obliging narrator, M. de Tregars rushed through the narrow corridor of the Hotel des Folies. At the moment when he reached the yard, he found himself in presence of Maxence.

Pale, his head bare, his eyes wild, shaking with a nervous chill, the poor fellow looked like a madman. Noticing M. de Tregars,

“Ah, my friend!” he exclaimed, “what misfortune!”

“Lucienne?”

“Dead, perhaps. The doctor will not answer for her recovery. I am going to the druggist’s to get a prescription.”

He was interrupted by the commissary of police, whose kind protection had hitherto preserved Mlle. Lucienne. He was coming out of the little room on the ground-floor, which the Fortins used for an office, bedroom, and dining-room.

He had recognized Marius de Tregars, and, coming up to him, he pressed his hand, saying, “Well, you know?”

“Yes.”

“It is my fault, M. le Marquis; for we were fully notified. I knew so well that Mlle. Lucienne’s existence was threatened, I was so fully expecting a new attempt upon her life, that, whenever she went out riding, it was one of my men, wearing a footman’s livery, who took his seat by the side of the coachman. To-day my man was so busy, that I said to myself, ‘Bash, for once!’ And behold the consequences!”

It was with inexpressible astonishment that Maxence was listening. It was with a profound stupor that he discovered between Marius and the commissary that serious intimacy which is the result of long intercourse, real esteem, and common hopes.

“It is not an accident, then,” remarked M. de Tregars.

“The coachman has spoken, doubtless?”

“No: the wretch was killed on the spot.”

And, without waiting for another question,

“But don’t let us stay here,” said the commissary.

“Whilst Maxence runs to the drug-store, let us go into the Fortins’ office.”

The husband was alone there, the wife being at that moment with Mlle. Lucienne.

“Do me the favor to go and take a walk for about fifteen minutes,” said the commissary to him. “We have to talk, this gentleman and myself.”

Humbly, without a word, and like a man who does himself justice, M. Fortin slipped off.

And at once,--“It is clear, M. le Marquis, it is manifest, that a crime has been committed. Listen, and judge for yourself. I was just rising from dinner, when I was notified of what was called our poor Lucienne’s accident. Without even changing my clothes, I ran. The carriage was lying in the street, broken to pieces. Two policemen were holding the horses, which had been stopped. I inquire. I learn that Lucienne, picked up by Maxence, has been able to drag herself as far as the Hotel des Folies, and that the driver has been taken to the nearest drug-store. Furious at my own negligence, and tormented by vague suspicions, it is to the druggist’s that I go first, and in all haste. The driver was in a backroom, stretched on a mattress.

“His head having struck the angle of the curbstone, his skull was broken; and he had just breathed his last. It was, apparently, the annihilation of the hope which I had, of enlightening myself by questioning this man. Nevertheless, I give orders to have him searched. No paper is discovered upon him to establish his identity; but, in one of the pockets of his pantaloons, do you know what they find? Two bank-notes of a thousand francs each, carefully wrapped up in a fragment of newspaper.”

M. de Tregars had shuddered.

“What a revelation!” he murmured.

It was not to the present circumstance that he applied that word. But the commissary naturally mistook him.

“Yes,” he went on, “it was a revelation. To me these two thousand francs were worth a confession: they could only be the wages of a crime. So, without losing a moment, I jump into a cab, and drive to Brion’s. Everybody was upside down, because the horses had just been brought back. I question; and, from the very first words, the correctness of my presumption is demonstrated to me. The wretch who had just died was not one of Brion’s coachmen. This is what had happened. At two o’clock, when the carriage ordered by M. Van Klopen was ready to go for Mlle. Lucienne, they had been compelled to send for the driver and the footman, who had forgotten themselves drinking in a neighboring wine-shop, with a man who had called to see them in the morning. They were slightly under the influence of wine, but not enough so to make it imprudent to trust them with horses; and it was even probable that the fresh air would sober them completely. They had then started; but, they had not gone very far, for one of their comrades had seen them stop the carriage in front of a wine-shop, and join there the same individual with whom they had been drinking all the morning.”

“And who was no other than the man who was killed?”

“Wait. Having obtained this information, I get some one to take me to the wine-shop; and I ask for the coachman and the footman from Brion’s. They were there still; and they are shown to me in a private room, lying on the floor, fast asleep. I try to wake them up, but in vain. I order to water them freely; but a pitcher of water thrown on their faces has no effect, save to make them utter an inarticulate groan. I guess at once what they have taken. I send for a physician, and I call on the wine-merchant for explanations. It is his wife and his barkeeper who answer me. They tell me, that, at about two o’clock, a man came in the shop, who stated that he was employed at Brion’s, and who ordered three glasses for himself and two comrades, whom he was expecting.

“A few moments later, a carriage stops at the door; and the driver and the footman leave it to come in. They were in a great hurry, they said, and only wished to take one glass. They do take three, one after another; then they order a bottle. They were evidently forgetting their horses, which they had given to hold to a commissionaire. Soon the man proposes a game. The others accept; and here they are, settled in the back-room, knocking on the table for sealed wine. The game must have lasted at least twenty minutes. At the end of that time, the man who had come in first appeared, looking very much annoyed, saying that it was very unpleasant, that his comrades were dead drunk, that they will miss their work, and that the boss, who is anxious to please his customers, will certainly dismiss them. Although he had taken as much, and more than the rest, he was perfectly steady; and, after reflecting for a moment,--‘I have an idea,’ he says. ‘Friends should help each other, shouldn’t they? I am going to take the coachman’s livery, and drive in his stead. I happen to know the customer they were going after. She is a very kind old lady, and I’ll tell her a story to explain the absence of the footman.’

“Convinced that the man is in Brion’s employment, they have no objection to offer to this fine project.

“The brigand puts on the livery of the sleeping coachman, gets up on the box, and starts off, after stating that he will return for his comrades as soon as he has got through the job, and that doubtless they will be sober by that time.”

M. de Tregars knew well enough the savoir-faire of the commissary not to be surprised at his promptness in obtaining precise information.

Already he was going on,

“Just as I was closing my examination, the doctor arrived. I show him my drunkards; and at once he recognizes that I have guessed correctly, and that these men have been put asleep by means of one of those narcotics of which certain thieves make use to rob their victims. A potion, which he administers to them by forcing their teeth open with a knife, draws them from this lethargy. They open their eyes, and soon are in condition to reply to my questions. They are furious at the trick that has been played upon them; but they do not know the man. They saw him, they swear to me, for the first time that very morning; and they are ignorant even of his name.”

There was no doubt possible after such complete explanations. The commissary had seen correctly, and he proved it.

It was not of a vulgar accident that Mlle. Lucienne had just been the victim, but of a crime laboriously conceived, and executed with unheard-of audacity,--of one of those crimes such as too many are committed, whose combinations, nine times out of ten, set aside even a suspicion, and foil all the efforts of human justice.

M. de Tregars knew now what had taken place, as clearly as if he had himself received the confession of the guilty parties.

A man had been found to execute that perilous programme,--to make the horses run away, and then to run into some heavy wagon. The wretch was staking his life on that game; it being evident that the light carriage must be smashed in a thousand pieces. But he must have relied upon his skill and his presence of mind, to avoid the shock, to jump off safe and sound; whilst Mlle. Lucienne, thrown upon the pavement, would probably be killed on the spot. The event had deceived his expectations, and he had been the victim of his rascality; but his death was a misfortune.

“Because now,” resumed the commissary, “the thread is broken in our hands which would infallibly have led us to the truth. Who is it that ordered the crime, and paid for it? We know it, since we know who benefits by the crime. But that is not sufficient. Justice requires something more than moral proofs. Living, this bandit would have spoken. His death insures the impunity of the wretches of whom he was but the instrument.”

“Perhaps,” said M. Tregars.

And at the same time he took out of his pocket, and showed the note found in Vincent Favoral’s pocket-book,--that note, so obscure the day before, now so terribly clear.

“I cannot understand your negligence. You should get through with that Van Klopen affair: there is the danger.”

The commissary of police cast but a glance upon it, and, replying to the objections of his old experience rather more than addressing himself to M. de Tregars,

“There can be no doubt about it,” he murmured. “It is to the crime committed to-day that these pressing recommendations relate; and, directed as they are to Vincent Favoral, they attest his complicity. It was he who had charge of finishing the Van Klopen affair; in other words, to get rid of Lucienne. It was he, I’d wager my head, who had treated with the false coachman.”

He remained for over a minute absorbed in his own thoughts, then,

“But who is the author of these recommendations to Vincent Favoral? Do you know that, M. le Marquis?” he said.

They looked at each other; and the same name rose to their lips,

“The Baroness de Thaller!”

This name, however, they did not utter.

The commissary had placed himself under the gasburner which gave light to the Fortin’s office; and, adjusting his glasses, he was scrutinizing the note with the most minute attention, studying the grain and the transparency of the paper, the ink, and the handwriting. And at last,

“This note,” he declared, “cannot constitute a proof against its author: I mean an evident, material proof, such as we require to obtain from a judge an order of arrest.”

And, as Marius was protesting,

“This note,” he insisted, “is written with the left hand, with common ink, on ordinary foolscap paper, such as is found everywhere. Now all left-hand writings look alike. Draw your own conclusions.”

But M. de Tregars did not give it up yet.

“Wait a moment,” he interrupted.

And briefly, though with the utmost exactness, he began telling his visit to the Thaller mansion, his conversation with Mlle. Cesarine, then with the baroness, and finally with the baron himself.

He described in the most graphic manner the scene which had taken place in the grand parlor between Mme. de Thaller and a worse than suspicious-looking man,--that scene, the secret of which had been revealed to him in its minutest details by the looking-glass. Its meaning was now as clear as day.

This suspicious-looking man had been one of the agents in arranging the intended murder: hence the agitation of the baroness when she had received his card, and her haste to join him. If she had started when he first spoke to her, it was because he was telling her of the successful execution of the crime. If she had afterwards made a gesture of joy, it was because he had just informed her that the coachman had been killed at the same time, and that she found herself thus rid of a dangerous accomplice.

The commissary of police shook his head.

“All this is quite probable,” he murmured; “but that’s all.”

Again M. de Tregars stopped him.

“I have not done yet,” he said.

And he went on saying how he had been suddenly and brutally assaulted by an unknown man in a restaurant; how he had collared this abject scoundrel, and taken out of his pocket a crushing letter, which left no doubt as to the nature of his mission.

The commissary’s eyes were sparkling,

“That letter!” he exclaimed, “that letter!” And, as soon as he had looked over it,

“Ah! This time,” he resumed, “I think that we have something tangible. ‘A troublesome gentleman to keep quiet,’--the Marquis de Tregars, of course, who is on the right track. ‘It will be for you the matter of a sword-thrust.’ Naturally, dead men tell no tales. ‘It will be for us the occasion of dividing a round amount.’ An honest trade, indeed!”

The good man was rubbing his hand with all his might.

“At last we have a positive fact,” he went on,--“a foundation upon which to base our accusations. Don’t be uneasy. That letter is going to place into our hands the scoundrel who assaulted you,--who will make known the go-between, who himself will not fail to surrender the Baroness de Thaller. Lucienne shall be avenged. If we could only now lay our hands on Vincent Favoral! But we’ll find him yet. I set two fellows after him this afternoon, who have a superior scent, and understand their business.”

He was here interrupted by Maxence, who was returning all out of breath, holding in his hand the medicines which he had gone after.

“I thought that druggist would never get through,” he said.

And regretting to have remained away so long, feeling uneasy, and anxious to return up stairs,

“Don’t you wish to see Lucienne?” he added, addressing himself to M. de Tregars rather more than to the commissary.

For all answer, they followed him at once.

A cheerless-looking place was Mlle. Lucienne’s room, without any furniture but a narrow iron bedstead, a dilapidated bureau, four straw-bottomed chairs, and a small table. Over the bed, and at the windows, were white muslin curtains, with an edging that had once been blue, but had become yellow from repeated washings.

Often Maxence had begged his friend to take a more comfortable lodging, and always she had refused.

“We must economize,” she would say. “This room does well enough for me; and, besides, I am accustomed to it.”

When M. de Tregars and the commissary walked in, the estimable hostess of the Hotel des Folies was kneeling in front of the fire, preparing some medicine.

Hearing the footsteps, she got up, and, with a finger upon her lips,

“Hush!” she said. “Take care not to wake her up!” The precaution was useless.

“I am not asleep,” said Mlle. Lucienne in a feeble voice. “Who is there?”

“I,” replied Maxence, advancing towards the bed.

It was only necessary to see the poor girl in order to understand Maxence’s frightful anxiety. She was whiter than the sheet; and fever, that horrible fever which follows severe wounds, gave to her eyes a sinister lustre.

“But you are not alone,” she said again.

“I am with him, my child,” replied the commissary. “I come to beg your pardon for having so badly protected you.”

She shook her head with a sad and gentle motion.

“It was myself who lacked prudence,” she said; “for to-day, while out, I thought I noticed something wrong; but it looked so foolish to be afraid! If it had not happened to-day, it would have happened some other day. The villains who have been pursuing me for years must be satisfied now. They will soon be rid of me.”

“Lucienne,” said Maxence in a sorrowful tone.

M. de Tregars now stepped forward.

“You shall live, mademoiselle,” he uttered in a grave voice. “You shall live to learn to love life.”

And, as she was looking at him in surprise,

“You do not know me,” he added.

Timidly, and as if doubting the reality,

“You,” she said, “the Marquis de Tregars!”

“Yes, mademoiselle, your brother.”

Had he had the control of events, Marius de Tregars would probably not have been in such haste to reveal this fact.

But how could he control himself in presence of that bed where a poor girl was, perhaps, about to die, sacrificed to the terrors and to the cravings of the miserable woman who was her mother,--to die at twenty, victim of the basest and most odious of crimes? How could he help feeling an intense pity at the sight of this unfortunate young woman who had endured every thing that a human being can suffer, whose life had been but a long and painful struggle, whose courage had risen above all the woes of adversity, and who had been able to pass without a stain through the mud and mire of Paris.

Besides, Marius was not one of those men who mistrust their first impulse, who manifest their emotion only for a purpose, who reflect and calculate before giving themselves up to the inspirations of their heart.

Lucienne was the daughter of the Marquis de Tregars: of that he was absolutely certain. He knew that the same blood flowed in his veins and in hers; and he told her so.

He told her so, above all, because he believed her in danger; and he wished, were she to die, that she should have, at least, that supreme joy. Poor Lucienne! Never had she dared to dream of such happiness. All her blood rushed to her cheeks; and, in a voice vibrating with the most intense emotion,

“Ah, now, yes,” she uttered, “I would like to live.”

The commissary of police, also, felt moved.

“Do not be alarmed, my child,” he said in his kindest tone. “Before two weeks you will be up. M. de Tregars is a great physician.”

In the mean time, she had attempted to raise herself on her pillow; and that simple effort had wrung from her a cry of anguish.

“Dear me! How I do suffer!”

“That’s because you won’t keep quiet, my darling,” said Mme. Fortin in a tone of gentle scolding. “Have you forgotten that the doctor has expressly forbidden you to stir?”

Then taking aside the commissary, Maxence, and M. de Tregars, she explained to them how imprudent it was to disturb Mlle. Lucienne’s rest. She was very ill, affirmed the worthy hostess; and her advice was, that they should send for a sick-nurse as soon as possible.

She would have been extremely happy, of course, to spend the night by the side of her dear lodger; but, unfortunately, she could not think of it, the hotel requiring all her time and attention. Fortunately, however, she knew in the neighborhood a widow, a very honest woman, and without her equal in taking care of the sick.

With an anxious and beseeching look, Maxence was consulting M. de Tregars. In his eyes could be read the proposition that was burning upon his lips,

“Shall I not go for Gilberte?”

But that proposition he had no time to express. Though they had been speaking very low, Mlle. Lucienne had heard.

“I have a friend,” she said, “who would certainly be willing to sit up with me.”

They all went up to her.

“What friend,” inquired the commissary of police.

“You know her very well, sir. It is that poor girl who had taken me home with her at Batignolles when I left the hospital, who came to my assistance during the Commune, and whom you helped to get out of the Versailles prisons.”

“Do you know what has become of her?”

“Only since yesterday, when I received a letter from her, a very friendly letter. She writes that she has found money to set up a dressmaking establishment, and that she is relying upon me to be her forewoman. She is going to open in the Rue St. Lazare; but, in the mean time, she is stopping in the Rue du Cirque.”

M. de Tregars and Maxence had started slightly.

“What is your friend’s name?” they inquired at once.

Not being aware of the particulars of the two young men’s visit to the Rue du Cirque, the commissary of police could not understand the cause of their agitation.

“I think,” he said, “that it would hardly be proper now to send for that girl.”

“It is to her alone, on the contrary, that we must resort,” interrupted M. de Tregars.

And, as he had good reasons to mistrust Mme. Fortin, he took the commissary outside the room, on the landing; and there, in a few words, he explained to him that this Zelie was precisely the same woman whom they had found in the Rue du Cirque, in that sumptuous mansion where Vincent Favoral, under the simple name of Vincent, had been living, according to the neighbors, in such a princely style.

The commissary of police was astounded. Why had he not known all this sooner? Better late than never, however.

“Ah! you are right, M. le Marquis, a hundred times right!” he declared. “This girl must evidently know Vincent Favoral’s secret, the key of the enigma that we are vainly trying to solve. What she would not tell to you, a stranger, she will tell to Lucienne, her friend.”

Maxence offered to go himself for Zelie Cadelle.

“No,” answered Marius. “If she should happen to know you, she would mistrust you, and would refuse to come.”

It was, therefore, M. Fortin who was despatched to the Rue du Cirque, and who went off muttering, though he had received five francs to take a carriage, and five francs for his trouble.

“And now,” said the commissary of police to Maxence, “we must both of us get out of the way. I, because the fact of my being a commissary would frighten Mme. Cadelle; you because, being Vincent Favoral’s son, your presence would certainly prove embarrassing to her.”

And so they went out; but M. de Tregars did not remain long alone with Mlle. Lucienne. M. Fortin had had the delicacy not to tarry on the way.

Eleven o’clock struck as Zelie Cadelle rushed like a whirlwind into her friend’s room.

Such had been his haste, that she had given no thought whatever to her dress. She had stuck upon her uncombed hair the first bonnet she had laid her hand upon, and thrown an old shawl over the wrapper in which she had received Marius in the afternoon.

“What, my poor Lucienne!” she exclaimed. “Are you so sick as all that?”

But she stopped short as she recognized M. de Tregars; and, in a suspicious tone,

“What a singular meeting!” she said.

Marius bowed.

“You know Lucienne?”

What she meant by that he understood perfectly. “Lucienne is my sister, madame,” he said coldly.

She shrugged her shoulders. “What humbug!”

“It’s the truth,” affirmed Mlle. Lucienne; “and you know that I never lie.”

Mme. Zelie was dumbfounded.

“If you say so,” she muttered. “But no matter: that’s queer.”

M. de Tregars interrupted her with a gesture,

“And, what’s more, it is because Lucienne is my sister that you see her there lying upon that bed. They attempted to murder her to-day!”

“Oh!”

“It was her mother who tried to get rid of her, so as to possess herself of the fortune which my father had left her; and there is every reason to believe that the snare was contrived by Vincent Favoral.”

Mme. Zelie did not understand very well; but, when Marius and Mlle. Lucienne had informed her of all that it was useful for her to know,

“Why,” she exclaimed, “what a horrid rascal that old Vincent must be!”

And, as M. de Tregars remained dumb,

“This afternoon,” she went on, “I didn’t tell you any stories; but I didn’t tell you every thing, either.” She stopped; and, after a moment of deliberation,

“Well, I don’t care for old Vincent,” she said. “Ah! he tried to have Lucienne killed, did he? Well, then, I am going to tell every thing I know. First of all, he wasn’t any thing to me. It isn’t very flattering; but it is so. He has never kissed so much as the end of my finger. He used to say that he loved me, but that he respected me still more, because I looked so much like a daughter he had lost. Old humbug! And I believed him too! I did, upon my word, at least in the beginning. But I am not such a fool as I look. I found out very soon that he was making fun of me; and that he was only using me as a blind to keep suspicion away from another woman.”

“From what woman?”

“Ah! now, I do not know! All I know is that she is married, that he is crazy about her, and that they are to run away together.”

“Hasn’t he gone, then?”

Mme. Cadelle’s face had become somewhat anxious, and for over a minute she seemed to hesitate.

“Do you know,” she said at last, “that my answer is going to cost me a lot? They have promised me a pile of money; but I haven’t got it yet. And, if I say any thing, good-by! I sha’n’t have any thing.”

M. de Tregars was opening his lips to tell her that she might rest easy on that score; but she cut him short.

“Well, no,” she said: “Old Vincent hasn’t gone. He got up a comedy, so he told me, to throw the lady’s husband off the track. He sent off a whole lot of baggage by the railroad; but he staid in Paris.”

“And do you know where he is hid?”

“In the Rue St. Lazare, of course: in the apartment that I hired two weeks ago.”

In a voice trembling with the excitement of almost certain success, “Would you consent to take me there?” asked M. de Tregars.

“Whenever you like,--to-morrow.”

IX

As he left Mlle. Lucienne’s room,

“There is nothing more to keep me at the Hotel des Folies,” said the commissary of police to Maxence. “Every thing possible will be done, and well done, by M. de Tregars. I am going home, therefore; and I am going to take you with me. I have a great deal to do and you’ll help me.”

That was not exactly true; but he feared, on the part of Maxence, some imprudence which might compromise the success of M. de Tregars’ mission.

He was trying to think of every thing to leave as little as possible to chance; like a man who has seen the best combined plans fail for want of a trifling precaution.

Once in the yard, he opened the door of the lodge where the honorable Fortins, man and wife, were deliberating, and exchanging their conjectures, instead of going to bed. For they were wonderfully puzzled by all those events that succeeded each other, and anxious about all these goings and comings.

“I am going home,” the commissary said to them; “but, before that, listen to my instructions. You will allow no one, you understand, --no one who is not known to you, to go up to Mlle. Lucienne’s room. And remember that I will admit of no excuse, and that you must not come and tell me afterwards, ‘It isn’t our fault, we can’t see everybody that comes in,’ and all that sort of nonsense.”

He was speaking in that harsh and imperious tone of which police-agents have the secret, when they are addressing people who have, by their conduct, placed themselves under their dependence.

“We are going to close our front-door,” replied the estimable hotel-keepers. “We will comply strictly with your orders.”

“I trust so; because, if you should disobey me, I should hear it, and the result would be a serious trouble to you. Besides your hotel being unmercifully closed up, you would find yourselves implicated in a very bad piece of business.”

The most ardent curiosity could be read in Mme. Fortin’s little eyes.

“I understood at once,” she began, “that something extraordinary was going on.”

But the commissary interrupted her,

“I have not done yet. It may be that to-night or to-morrow some one will call and inquire how Mlle. Lucienne is.”

“And then?”

“You will answer that she is as bad as possible; and that she has neither spoken a word, nor recovered her senses, since the accident; and that she will certainly not live through the day.”

The effort which Mme. Fortin made to remain silent gave, better than any thing else, an idea of the terror with which the commissary inspired her.

“That is not all,” he went on. “As soon as the person in question has started off, you will follow him, without affectation, as far as the street-door, and you will point him out with your finger, here, like that, to one of my agents, who will happen to be on the Boulevard.”

“And suppose he should not be there?”

“He shall be there. You can make yourself easy on that score.”

The looks of distress which the honorable hotel-keepers were exchanging did not announce a very tranquil conscience.

“In other words, here we are under surveillance,” said M. Fortin with a groan. “What have we done to be thus mistrusted?”

To reply to him would have been a task more long than difficult.

“Do as I tell you,” insisted the commissary harshly, “and don’t mind the rest, and, meantime, good-night.”

He was right in trusting implicitly to his agent’s punctuality; for, as soon as he came out of the Hotel des Folies, a man passed by him, and without seeming to address him, or even to recognize him, said in a whisper,

“What news?”

“Nothing,” he replied, “except that the Fortins are notified. The trap is well set. Keep your eyes open now, and spot any one who comes to ask about Mlle. Lucienne.”

And he hurried on, still followed by Maxence, who walked along like a body without soul, tortured by the most frightful anguish.

As he had been away the whole evening, four or five persons were waiting for him at his office on matters of current business. He despatched them in less than no time; after which, addressing himself to an agent on duty,

“This evening,” he said, “at about nine o’clock, in a restaurant on the Boulevard, a quarrel took place. A person tried to pick a quarrel with another.

“You will proceed at once to that restaurant; you will get the particulars of what took place; and you will ascertain exactly who this man is, his name, his profession, and his residence.”

Like a man accustomed to such errands,

“Can I have a description of him?” inquired the agent.

“Yes. He is a man past middle age, military bearing, heavy mustache, ribbons in his buttonhole.”

“Yes, I see: one of your regular fighting fellows.”

“Very well. Go then. I shall not retire before your return. Ah, I forgot; find out what they thought to-night on the ‘street’ about the Mutual Credit affair, and what they said of the arrest of one Saint Pavin, editor of ‘The Financial Pilot,’ and of a banker named Jottras.”

“Can I take a carriage?”

“Do so.”

The agent started; and he was not fairly out of the house, when the commissary, opening a door which gave into a small study, called, “Felix!”

It was his secretary, a man of about thirty, blonde, with a gentle and timid countenance, having, with his long coat, somewhat the appearance of a theological student. He appeared immediately.

“You call me, sir?”

“My dear Felix,” replied the commissary, “I have seen you, sometimes, imitate very nicely all sorts of hand-writings.”

The secretary blushed very much, no doubt on account of Maxence, who was sitting by the side of his employer. He was a very honest fellow; but there are certain little talents of which people do not like to boast; and the talent of imitating the writing of others is of the number, for the reason, that, fatally and at once, it suggests the idea of forgery.

“It was only for fun that I used to do that, sir,” he stammered.

“Would you be here if it had been otherwise?” said the commissary. “Only this time it is not for fun, but to do me a favor that I wish you to try again.”

And, taking out of his pocket the letter taken by M. de Tregars from the man in the restaurant,

“Examine this writing,” he said, “and see whether you feel capable of imitating it tolerably well.”

Spreading the letter under the full light of the lamp, the secretary spent at least two minutes examining it with the minute attention of an expert. And at the same time he was muttering,

“Not at all convenient, this. Hard writing to imitate. Not a salient feature, not a characteristic sign! Nothing to strike the eye, or attract attention. It must be some old lawyer’s clerk who wrote this.”

In spite of his anxiety of mind, the commissary smiled.

“I shouldn’t be surprised if you had guessed right.”

Thus encouraged,

“At any rate,” Felix declared, “I am going to try.”

He took a pen, and, after trying a dozen times,

“How is this?” he asked, holding out a sheet of paper.

The commissary carefully compared the original with the copy.

“It is not perfect,” he murmured; “but at night, with the imagination excited by a great peril--Besides, we must risk something.”

“If I had a few hours to practise!”

“But you have not. Come, take up your pen, and write as well as you can, in that same hand, what I am going to tell you.”

And after a moment’s thought, he dictated as follows:

“All goes well. T. drawn into a quarrel, is to fight in the morning with swords. But our man, whom I cannot leave, refuses to go ahead, unless he is paid two thousand francs before the duel. I have not the amount. Please hand it to the bearer, who has orders to wait for you.”

The commissary, leaning over his secretary’s shoulder, was following his hand, and, the last word being written,

“Perfect!” he exclaimed. “Now quick, the address: Mme. la Baronne de Thaller, Rue de le Pepiniere.”

There are professions which extinguish, in those who exercise them, all curiosity. It is with the most complete indifference, and without asking a question, that the secretary had done what he had been requested.

“Now, my dear Felix,” resumed the commissary, “you will please get yourself up as near as possible like a restaurant-waiter, and take this letter to its address.”

“At this hour!”

“Yes. The Baroness de Thaller is out to a ball. You will tell the servants that you are bringing her an answer concerning an important matter. They know nothing about it; but they will allow you to wait for their mistress in the porter’s lodge. As soon as she comes in, you will hand her the letter, stating that two gentlemen who are taking supper in your restaurant are waiting for the answer. It may be that she will exclaim that you are a scoundrel, that she does not know what it means: in that case, we shall have been anticipated, and you must get away as fast as you can. But the chances are, that she will give you two thousand francs; and then you must so manage, that she will be seen plainly when she does it. Is it all understood?”

“Perfectly.”

“Go ahead, then, and do not lose a minute. I shall wait.”

Away from Mlle. Lucienne, Maxence had gradually been recalled to the strangeness of the situation; and it was with a mingled feeling of curiosity and surprise that he observed the commissary acting and bustling about.

The good man had found again all the activity of his youth, together with that fever of hope and that impatience of success, which usually disappear with age.

He was going over the whole of the case again,--his first meeting with Mlle. Lucienne, the various attempts upon her life; and he had just taken out of the file the letter of information which had been intrusted to him, in order to compare the writing with that of the letter taken from his adversary by M. de Tregars, when the latter came in all out of breath.

“Zelie has spoken!” he said.

And, at once addressing Maxence,

“You, my dear friend,” he resumed, “you must run to the Hotel des Folies.”

“Is Lucienne worse?”

“No. Lucienne is getting on well enough. Zelie has spoken; but there is no certainty, that, after due reflection, she will not repent, and go and give the alarm. You will return, therefore, and you will not lose sight of her until I call for her in the morning. If she wishes to go out, you must prevent her.”

The commissary had understood the importance of the precaution.

“You must prevent her,” he added, “even by force; and I authorize you, if need be, to call upon the agent whom I have placed on duty, watching the Hotel des Folies, and to whom I am going to send word immediately.”

Maxence started off on a run.

“Poor fellow!” murmured Marius, “I know where your father is. What are we going to learn now?”

He had scarcely had time to communicate the information he had received from Mme. Cadelle, when the first of the commissary’s emissaries made his appearance.

“The commission is done,” he said, in that confident tone of a man who thinks he has successfully accomplished a difficult task.

“You know the name of the individual who sought a quarrel with M. de Tregars?”

“His name is Corvi. He is well known in all the tables d’hote, where there are women, and where they deal a healthy little game after dinner. I know him well too. He is a bad fellow, who passes himself off for a former superior officer in the Italian army.”

“His address?”

“He lives at Rue de la Michodiere, in a furnished house. I went there. The porter told me that my man had just gone out with an ill-looking individual, and that they must be in a little cafe on the corner of the next street. I ran there, and found my two fellows drinking beer.”

“Won’t they give us the slip?”

“No danger of that: I have got them fixed.”

“How is that?”

“It is an idea of mine. I just thought, ‘Suppose they put off?’ And at once I went to notify some policemen, and I returned to station myself near the cafe. It was just closing up. My two fellows came out: I picked a quarrel with them; and now they are in the station-house, well recommended.”

The commissary knit his brows.

“That’s almost too much zeal,” he murmured. “Well, what’s done is done. Did you make any inquiries about the Saint Pavin and Jottras matter?”

“I had no time, it was too late. You forget, perhaps, sir, that it is nearly two o’clock.”

Just as he got through, the secretary who had been sent to the Rue de la Pepiniere came in.

“Well?” inquired the commissary, not without evident anxiety.

“I waited for Mme. de Thaller over an hour,” he said. “When she came home, I gave her the letter. She read it; and, in presence of a number of her servants, she handed me these two thousand francs.”

At the sight of the bank notes, the commissary jumped to his feet.

“Now we have it!” he exclaimed. “Here is the proof that we wanted.”

X

It was after four o’clock when M. de Tregars was at last permitted to return home. He had minutely, and at length, arranged every thing with the commissary: he had endeavored to anticipate every eventuality. His line of conduct was perfectly well marked out, and he carried with him the certainty that on the day which was about to dawn the strange game that he was playing must be finally won or lost. When he reached home,

“At last, here you are, sir!” exclaimed his faithful servant.

It was doubtless anxiety that had kept up the old man all night; but so absorbed was Marius’s mind, that he scarcely noticed the fact.

“Did any one call in my absence?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. A gentleman called during the evening, M. Costeclar, who appeared very much vexed not to find you in. He stated that he came on a very important matter that you would know all about: and he requested me to ask you to wait for him to-morrow, that is to-day, by twelve o’clock.”

Was M. Costeclar sent by M. de Thaller? Had the manager of the Mutual Credit changed his mind? and had he decided to accept the conditions which he had at first rejected? In that case, it was too late. It was no longer in the power of any human being to suspend the action of justice. Without giving any further thought to that visit,

“I am worn out with fatigue,” said M. de Tregars, “and I am going to lie down. At eight o’clock precisely you will call me.”

But it was in vain that he tried to find a short respite in sleep. For forty-eight hours his mind had been taxed beyond measure, his nerves had been wrought up to an almost intolerable degree of exaltation.

As soon as he closed his eyes, it was with a merciless precision that his imagination presented to him all the events which had taken place since that afternoon in the Place-Royale when he had ventured to declare his love to Mlle. Gilberte. Who could have told him then, that he would engage in that struggle, the issue of which must certainly be some abominable scandal in which his name would be mixed? Who could have told him, that gradually, and by the very force of circumstances, he would be led to overcome his repugnance, and to rival the ruses and the tortuous combinations of the wretches he was trying to reach?

But he was not of those who, once engaged, regret, hesitate, and draw back. His conscience reproached him for nothing. It was for justice and right that he was battling; and Mlle. Gilberte was the prize that would reward him.

Eight o’clock struck; and his servant came in.

“Run for a cab,” he said: “I’ll be ready in a moment.”

He was ready, in fact, when the old servant returned; and, as he had in his pocket some of those arguments that lend wings to the poorest cab-horses, in less than ten minutes he had reached the Hotel des Folies.

“How is Mlle. Lucienne?” he inquired first of all of the worthy hostess.

The intervention of the commissary of police had made M. Fortin and his wife more supple than gloves, and more gentle than doves.

“The poor dear child is much better,” answered Mme. Fortin; “and the doctor, who has just left, now feels sure of her recovery. But there is a row up there.”

“A row?”

“Yes. That lady whom my husband went after last night insists upon going out; and M. Maxence won’t let her: so that they are quarreling up there. Just listen.”

The loud noise of a violent altercation could be heard distinctly. M. de Tregars started up stairs, and on the second-story landing he found Maxence holding on obstinately to the railing, whilst Mme. Zelie Cadelle, redder than a peony, was trying to induce him to let her pass, treating him at the same time to some of the choicest epithets of her well-stocked repertory. Catching sight of Marius,

“Is it you,” she cried, “who gave orders to keep me here against my wishes? By what right? Am I your prisoner?”

To irritate her would have been imprudent.

“Why did you wish to leave,” said M. de Tregars gently, “at the very moment when you knew that I was to call for you?”

But she interrupted him, and, shrugging her shoulders,

“Why don’t you tell the truth?” she said. “You were afraid to trust me.”

“Oh!”

“You are wrong! What I promise to do I do. I only wanted to go home to dress. Can I go in the street in this costume?”

And she was spreading out her wrapper, all faded and stained.

“I have a carriage below,” said Marius. “No one will see us.”

Doubtless she understood that it was useless to hesitate.

“As you please,” she said.

M. de Tregars took Maxence aside, and in a hurried whisper,

“You must,” said he, “go at once to the Rue St. Gilles, and in my name request your sister to accompany you. You will take a closed carriage, and you’ll go and wait in the Rue St. Lazare, opposite No. 25. It may be that Mlle. Gilberte’s assistance will become indispensable to me. And, as Lucienne must not be left alone, you will request Mme. Fortin to go and stay with her.”

And, without waiting for an answer,

“Let us go,” he said to Mme. Cadelle.

They started but the young woman was far from being in her usual spirits. It was clear that she was regretting bitterly having gone so far, and not having been able to get away at the last moment. As the carriage went on, she became paler and a frown appeared upon her face.

“No matter,” she began: “it’s a nasty thing I am doing there.”

“Do you repent then, assisting me to punish your friend’s assassins?” said M. de Tregars.

She shook her head.

“I know very well that old Vincent is a scoundrel,” she said; “but he had trusted me, and I am betraying him.”

“You are mistaken, madame. To furnish me the means of speaking to M. Favoral is not to betray him; and I shall do every thing in my power to enable him to escape the police, and make his way abroad.”

“What a joke!”

“It is the exact truth: I give you my word of honor.” She seemed to feel easier; and, when the carriage turned into the Rue St. Lazare, “Let us stop a moment,” she said.

“Why?”

“So that I can buy old Vincent’s breakfast. He can’t go out to eat, of course; and so I have to take all his meals to him.”

Marius’s mistrust was far from being dissipated; and yet he did not think it prudent to refuse, promising himself, however, not to lose sight of Mme. Zelie. He followed her, therefore, to the baker’s and the butcher’s; and when she had done her marketing, he entered with her the house of modest appearance where she had her apartment.

They were already going up stairs, when the porter ran out of his lodge.

“Madame!” he said, “madame!”

Mme. Cadelle stopped.

“What is the matter?”

“A letter for you.”

“For me?”

“Here it is. A lady brought it less than five minutes ago. Really, she looked annoyed not to find you in. But she is going to come back. She knew you were to be here this morning.”

M. de Tregars had also stopped.

“What kind of a looking person was this lady?” he asked.

“Dressed all in black, with a thick veil on her face.”

“All right. I thank you.”

The porter returned to his lodge. Mme. Zelie broke the seal. The first envelope contained another, upon which she spelt, for she did not read very fluently, “To be handed to M. Vincent.”

“Some one knows that he is hiding here,” she said in a tone of utter surprise. “Who can it be?”

“Who? Why, the woman whose reputation M. Favoral was so anxious to spare when he put you in the Rue du Cirque house.”

There was nothing that irritated the young woman so much as this idea.

“You are right,” she said. “What a fool he made of me; the old rascal! But never mind. I am going to pay him for it now.”

Nevertheless when she reached her story, the third, and at the moment of slipping the key into the keyhole, she again seemed perplexed.

“If some misfortune should happen,” she sighed.

“What are you afraid of?”

“Old Vincent has got all sorts of arms in there. He has sworn to me that the first person who forced his way into the apartments, he would kill him like a dog. Suppose he should fire at us?”

She was afraid, terribly afraid: she was livid, and her teeth chattered.

“Let me go first,” suggested M. de Tregars.

“No. Only, if you were a good fellow, you would do what I am going to ask you. Say, will you?”

“If it can be done.”

“Oh, certainly! Here is the thing. We’ll go in together; but you must not make any noise. There is a large closet with glass doors, from which every thing can be heard and seen that goes on in the large room. You’ll get in there. I’ll go ahead, and draw out old Vincent into the parlor and at the right moment, v’lan! you appear.”

It was after all, quite reasonable.

“Agreed!” said Marius.

“Then,” she said, “every thing will go on right. The entrance of the closet with the glass doors is on the right as you go in. Come along now, and walk easy.”

And she opened the door.

XI

The apartment was exactly as described by Mme. Cadelle. In the dark and narrow ante-chamber, three doors opened,--on the left, that of the dining-room; in the centre, that of a parlor and bedroom which communicated; on the right, that of the closet. M. de Tregars slipped in noiselessly through the latter, and at once recognized that Mme. Zelie had not deceived him, and that he would see and hear every thing that went on in the parlor. He saw the young woman walk into it. She laid her provisions down upon the table, and called,

“Vincent!”

The former cashier of the Mutual Credit appeared at once, coming out of the bedroom.

He was so changed, that his wife and children would have hesitated in recognizing him. He had cut off his beard, pulled out almost the whole of his thick eye-brows, and covered his rough and straight hair under a brown curly wig. He wore patent-leather boots, wide pantaloons, and one of those short jackets of rough material, and with broad sleeves which French elegance has borrowed from English stable-boys. He tried to appear calm, careless, and playful; but the contraction of his lips betrayed a horrible anguish, and his look had the strange mobility of the wild beasts’ eye, when, almost at bay, they stop for a moment, listening to the barking of the hounds.

“I was beginning to fear that you would disappoint me,” he said to Mme. Zelie.

“It took me some time to buy your breakfast.”

“And is that all that kept you?”

“The porter detained me too, to hand me a letter, in which I found one for you. Here it is.”

“A letter!” exclaimed Vincent Favoral.

And, snatching it from her, he tore off the envelope. But he had scarcely looked over it, when he crushed it in his hand, exclaiming,

“It is monstrous! It is a mean, infamous treason!” He was interrupted by a violent ringing of the door-bell.

“Who can it be?” stammered Mme. Cadelle.

“I know who it is,” replied the former cashier. “Open, open quick.”

She obeyed; and almost at once a woman walked into the parlor, wearing a cheap, black woolen dress. With a sudden gesture, she threw off her veil; and M. de Tregars recognized the Baroness de Thaller.

“Leave us!” she said to Mme. Zelie, in a tone which one would hardly dare to assume towards a bar-maid.

The other felt indignant.

“What, what!” she began. “I am in my own house here.”

“Leave us!” repeated M. Favoral with a threatening gesture. “Go, go!”

She went out but only to take refuge by the side of M. de Tregars.

“You hear how they treat me,” she said in a hoarse voice.

He made no answer. All his attention was centred upon the parlor. The Baroness de Thaller and the former cashier were standing opposite each other, like two adversaries about to fight a duel.

“I have just read your letter,” began Vincent Favoral.

Coldly the baroness said, “Ah!”

“It is a joke, I suppose.”

“Not at all.”

“You refuse to go with me?”

“Positively.”

“And yet it was all agreed upon. I have acted wholly under your urgent, pressing advice. How many times have you repeated to me that to live with your husband had become an intolerable torment to you! How many times have you sworn to me that you wished to be mine alone, begging me to procure a large sum of money, and to fly with you!”

“I was in earnest at the time. I have discovered, at the last moment, that it would be impossible for me thus to abandon my country, my daughter, my friends.”

“We can take Cesarine with us.”

“Do not insist.”

He was looking at her with a stupid, gloomy gaze.

“Then,” he stammered, “those tears, those prayers, those oaths!”

“I have reflected.”

“It is not possible! If you spoke the truth, you would not be here.”

“I am here to make you understand that we must give up projects which cannot be realized. There are some social conventionalities which cannot be torn up.” As if he scarcely understood what she said, he repeated,

“Social conventionalities!”

And suddenly falling at Mme. de Thaller’s feet, his head thrown back, and his hands clasped together,

“You lie!” he said. “Confess that you lie, and that it is a final trial which you are imposing upon me. Or else have you, then, never loved me? That’s impossible! I would not believe you if you were to say so. A woman who does not love a man cannot be to him what you have been to me: she does not give herself up thus so joyously and so completely. Have you, then, forgotten every thing? Is it possible that you do not remember those divine evenings in the Rue de Cirque?--those nights, the mere thought of which fires my brain, and consumes my blood.”

He was horrible to look at, horrible and ridiculous at the same time. As he wished to take Mme. de Thaller’s hands, she stepped back, and he followed her, dragging himself on his knees.

“Where could you find,” he continued, “a man to worship you like me, with an ardent, absolute, blind, mad passion? With what can you reproach me? Have I not sacrificed to you without a murmur every thing that a man can sacrifice here below,--fortune, family, honor, --to supply your extravagance, to anticipate your slightest fancies, to give you gold to scatter by the handful? Did I not leave my own family struggling with poverty? I would have snatched bread from my children’s mouths in order to purchase roses to scatter under your footsteps. And for years did ever a word from me betray the secret of our love? What have I not endured? You deceived me. I knew it, and I said nothing. Upon a word from you I stepped aside before him whom your caprice made happy for a day. You told me, ‘Steal!’ and I stole. You told me, ‘Kill!’ and I tried to kill.”

“Fly. A man who has twelve hundred thousand francs in gold, bank-notes, and good securities, can always get along.”

“And my wife and children?”

“Maxence is old enough to help his mother. Gilberte will find a husband: depend upon it. Besides, what’s to prevent you from sending them money?”

“They would refuse it.”

“You will always be a fool, my dear!”

To Vincent Favoral’s first stupor and miserable weakness now succeeded a terrible passion. All the blood had left his face: his eyes was flashing.

“Then,” he resumed, “all is really over?”

“Of course.”

“Then I have been duped like the rest,--like that poor Marquis de Tregars, whom you had made mad also. But he, at least saved his honor; whereas I--And I have no excuse; for I should have known. I knew that you were but the bait which the Baron de Thaller held out to his victims.”

He waited for an answer; but she maintained a contemptuous silence.

“Then you think,” he said with a threatening laugh, “that it will all end that way?”

“What can you do?”

“There is such a thing as justice, I imagine, and judges too. I can give myself up, and reveal every thing.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“That would be throwing yourself into the wolf’s mouth for nothing,” she said. “You know better than any one else that my precautions are well enough taken to defy any thing you can do or say. I have nothing to fear.”

“Are you quite sure of that?”

“Trust to me,” she said with a smile of perfect security.

The former cashier of the Mutual Credit made a terrible gesture; but, checking himself at once, he seized one of the baroness’s hands. She withdrew it quickly, however, and, in an accent of insurmountable disgust,

“Enough, enough!” she said.

In the adjoining closet Marius de Tregars could feel Mme. Zelie Cadelle shuddering by his side.

“What a wretch that woman is!” she murmured; “and he--what a base coward!”

The former cashier remained prostrated, striking the floor with his head.

“And you would forsake me,” he groaned, “when we are united by a past such as ours! How could you replace me? Where would you find a slave so devoted to your every wish?”

The baroness was getting impatient.

“Stop!” she interrupted,--“stop these demonstrations as useless as ridiculous.”

This time he did start up, as if lashed with a whip and, double locking the door which communicated with the ante-chamber, he put the key in his pocket; and, with a step as stiff and mechanical as that of an automaton, he disappeared in the sleeping-room.

“He is going for a weapon,” whispered Mme. Cadelle.

It was also what Marius thought.

“Run down quick,” he said to Mme. Zelie. “In a cab standing opposite No. 25, you will find Mlle. Gilberte Favoral waiting. Let her come at once.”

And, rushing into the parlor,

“Fly!” he said to Mme. Thaller.

But she was as petrified by this apparition.

“M. de Tregars!”

“Yes, yes, me. But hurry and go!”

And he pushed her into the closet.

It was but time. Vincent Favoral reappeared upon the threshold of the bedroom. But, if it was a weapon he had gone for, it was not for the one which Marius and Mme. Cadelle supposed. It was a bundle of papers which he held in his hand. Seeing M. de Tregars there, instead of Mme. de Thaller, an exclamation of terror and surprise rose to his lips. He understood vaguely what must have taken place; that the man who stood there must have been concealed in the glass closet, and that he had assisted the baroness to escape.

“Ah, the miserable wretch!” he stammered with a tongue made thick by passion, “the infamous wretch! She has betrayed me; she has surrendered me. I am lost!”

Mastering the most terrible emotion he had ever felt,

“No, no! you shall not be surrendered,” uttered M. de Tregars.

Collecting all the energy that the devouring passion which had blasted his existence had left him, the former cashier of the Mutual Credit took one or two steps forward.

“Who are you, then?” he asked.

“Do you not know me? I am the son of that unfortunate Marquis de Tregars of whom you spoke a moment since. I am Lucienne’s brother.”

Like a man who has received a stunning blow, Vincent Favoral sank heavily upon a chair.

“He knows all,” he groaned.

“Yes, all!”

“You must hate me mortally.”

“I pity you.”

The old cashier had reached that point when all the faculties, after being strained to their utmost limits, suddenly break down, when the strongest man gives up, and weeps like a child.

“Ah, I am the most wretched of villains!” he exclaimed.

He had hid his face in his hands; and in one second,--as it happens, they say, to the dying on the threshold of eternity,--he reviewed his entire existence.

“And yet,” he said, “I had not the soul of a villain. I wanted to get rich; but honestly, by labor, and by rigid economy. And I should have succeeded. I had a hundred and fifty thousand francs of my own when I met the Baron de Thaller. Alas! why did I meet him? ‘Twas he who first gave me to understand that it was stupid to work and save, when, at the bourse, with moderate luck, one might become a millionaire in six months.”

He stopped, shook his head, and suddenly,

“Do you know the Baron de Thaller?” he asked. And, without giving Marius time to answer,

“He is a German,” he went on, “a Prussian. His father was a cab-driver in Berlin, and his mother waiting-maid in a brewery. At the age of eighteen, he was compelled to leave his country, owing to some petty swindle, and came to take up his residence in Paris. He found employment in the office of a stock-broker, and was living very poorly, when he made the acquaintance of a young laundress named Affrays, who had for a lover a very wealthy gentleman, the Marquis de Tregars, whose weakness was to pass himself off for a poor clerk. Affrays and Thaller were well calculated to agree. They did agree, and formed an association,--she contributing her beauty; he, his genius for intrigue; both, their corruption and their vices. Soon after they met, she gave birth to a child, a daughter; whom she intrusted to some poor gardeners at Louveciennes, with the firm and settled intention to leave her there forever. And yet it was upon this daughter, whom they firmly hoped never to see again, that the two accomplices were building their fortune.

“It was in the name of that daughter that Affrays wrung considerable sums from the Marquis de Tregars. As soon as Thaller and she found themselves in possession of six hundred thousand francs, they dismissed the marquis, and got married. Already, at that time, Thaller had taken the title of baron, and lived in some style. But his first speculations were not successful. The revolution of 1848 finished his ruin, and he was about being expelled from the bourse, when he found me on his way,--I, poor fool, who was going about everywhere, asking how I could advantageously invest my hundred and fifty thousand francs.”

He was speaking in a hoarse voice, shaking his clinched fist in the air, doubtless at the Baron de Thaller.

“Unfortunately,” he resumed, “it was only much later that I discovered all this. At the moment, M. de Thaller dazzled me. His friends, Saint Pavin and the bankers Jottras, proclaimed him the smartest and the most honest man in France. Still I would not have given my money, if it had not been for the baroness. The first time that I was introduced to her, and that she fixed upon me her great black eyes, I felt myself moved to the deepest recesses of my soul. In order to see her again, I invited her, together with her husband and her husband’s friends, to dine with me, by the side of my wife and children. She came. Her husband made me sign every thing he pleased; but, as she went off, she pressed my hand.”

He was still shuddering at the recollection of it, the poor fellow!

“The next day,” he went on, “I handed to Thaller all I had in the world; and, in exchange, he gave me the position of cashier in the Mutual Credit, which he had just founded. He treated me like an inferior, and did not admit me to visit his family. But I didn’t care: the baroness had permitted me to see her again, and almost every afternoon I met her at the Tuileries; and I had made bold to tell her that I loved her to desperation. At last, one evening, she consented to make an appointment with me for the second following day, in an apartment which I had rented.

“The day before I was to meet her, and whilst I was beside myself with joy, the Baron de Thaller requested me to assist him, by means of certain irregular entries, to conceal a deficit arising from unsuccessful speculations. How could I refuse a man, whom, as I thought, I was about to deceive grossly! I did as he wished. The next day Mme. de Thaller became my mistress; and I was a lost man.”

Was he trying to exculpate himself? Was he merely yielding to that imperious sentiment, more powerful than the will or the reason, which impels the criminal to reveal the secret which oppresses him?

“From that day,” he went on, “began for me the torment of that double existence which I underwent for years. I had given to my mistress all I had in the world; and she was insatiable. She wanted money always, any way, and in heaps. She made me buy the house in the Rue du Cirque for our meetings; and, between the demands of the husband and those of the wife, I was almost insane. I drew from the funds of the Mutual Credit as from an inexhaustible mine; and, as I foresaw that some day must come when all would be discovered, I always carried about me a loaded revolver, with which to blow out my brains when they came to arrest me.”

And he showed to Marius the handle of a revolver protruding from his pocket.

“And if only she had been faithful to me!” he continued, becoming more and more animated. “But what have I not endured! When the Marquis de Tregars returned to Paris, and they set about defrauding him of his fortune, she did not hesitate a moment to become his mistress again. She used to tell me, ‘What a fool you are! all I want is his money. I love no one but you.’ But after his death she took others. She made use of our house in the Rue du Cirque for purposes of dissipation for herself and her daughter Cesarine. And I--miserable coward that I was!--I suffered all, so much did I tremble to lose her, so much did I fear to be weaned from the semblance of love with which she paid my fearful sacrifices. And now she would betray me, forsake me! For every thing that has taken place was suggested by her in order to procure a sum wherewith to fly to America. It was she who imagined the wretched comedy which I played, so as to throw upon myself the whole responsibility. M. de Thaller has had millions for his share: I have only had twelve hundred thousand francs.”

Violent nervous shudders shook his frame: his face became purple. He drew himself up, and, brandishing the letters which he held in his hand,

“But all is not over!” he exclaimed. “There are proofs which neither the baron nor his wife know that I have. I have the proof of the infamous swindle of which the Marquis de Tregars was the victim. I have the proof of the farce got up by M. de Thaller and myself to defraud the stockholders of the Mutual Credit!”

“What do you hope for?”

He was laughing a stupid laugh.

“I? I shall go and hide myself in some suburb of Paris, and write to Affrays to come. She knows that I have twelve hundred thousand francs. She will come; and she will keep coming as long as I have any money. And when I have no more:--”

He stopped short, starting back, his arms outstretched as if to repel a terrifying apparition. Mlle. Gilberte had just appeared at the door.

“My daughter!” stammered the wretch. “Gilberte!”

“The Marquise de Tregars,” uttered Marius.

An inexpressible look of terror and anguish convulsed the features of Vincent Favoral: he guessed that it was the end.

“What do you want with me?” he stammered.

“The money that you have stolen, father,” replied the girl in an inexorable tone of voice,--“the twelve hundred thousand francs which you have here, then the proofs which are in your hands, and, finally your weapons.”

He was trembling from head to foot.

“Take away my money!” he said. “Why, that would be compelling me to give myself up! Do you wish to see me in prison?”

“The disgrace would fall back upon your children, sir,” said M. de Tregars. “We shall, on the contrary, do every thing in the world to enable you to evade the pursuit of the police.”

“Well, yes, then. But to-morrow I must write to Affrays: I must see her!”

“You have lost your mind, father,” said Mlle. Gilberte. “Come, do as I ask you.”

He drew himself up to his full height.

“And suppose I refuse?”

But it was the last effort of his will. He yielded, though not without an agonizing struggle and gave up to his daughter the money, the proofs and the arms. And as she was walking away, leaning on M. de Tregars’ arm,

“But send me your mother, at least,” he begged. “She will understand me: she will not be without pity. She is my wife: let her come quick. I will not, I can not remain alone.”

XII

It was with convulsive haste that the Baroness de Thaller went over the distance that separated the Rue St. Lazare from the Rue de la Pepiniere. The sudden intervention of M. de Tregars had upset all her ideas. The most sinister presentiments agitated her mind. In the courtyard of her residence, all the servants, gathered in a group, were talking. They did not take the trouble to stand aside to let her pass; and she even noticed some smiles and ironical gigglings. This was a terrible blow to her. What was the matter? What had they heard? In the magnificent vestibule, a man was sitting as she came in. It was the same suspicious character that Marius de Tregars had seen in the grand parlor, in close conference with the baroness.

“Bad news,” he said with a sheepish look.

“What?”

“That little Lucienne must have her soul riveted to her body. She is only wounded; and she’ll get over it.”

“Never mind Lucienne. What about M. de Tregars?”

“Oh! he is another sharp one. Instead of taking up our man’s provocation, he collared him, and took away from him the note I had sent him.”

Mme. de Thaller started violently.

“What is the meaning, then,” she asked, “of your letter of last night, in which you requested me to hand two thousand francs to the bearer?”

The man became pale as death.

“You received a letter from me,” he stammered, “last night?”

“Yes, from you; and I gave the money.”

The man struck his forehead.

“I understand it all!” he exclaimed.

“What?”

“They wanted proofs. They imitated my handwriting, and you swallowed the bait. That’s the reason why I spent the night in the station-house; and, if they let me go this morning, it was to find out where I’d go. I have been followed, they are shadowing me. We are gone up, Mme. le Baronne. _Sauve qui peut!_”

And he ran out.

More agitated than ever Mme. de Thaller went up stairs. In the little red-and-gold parlor, the Baron de Thaller and Mlle. Cesarine were waiting for her. Stretched upon an arm-chair, her legs crossed, the tip of her boot on a level with her eye, Mlle. Cesarine, with a look of ironical curiosity, was watching her father, who, livid and trembling with nervous excitement, was walking up and down, like a wild beast in his cage. As soon as the baroness appeared,

“Things are going badly,” said her husband, “very badly. Our game is devilishly compromised.”

“You think so?”

“I am but too sure of it. Such a well-combined stroke too! But every thing is against us. In presence of the examining magistrate, Jottras held out well; but Saint Pavin spoke. That dirty rascal was not satisfied with the share allotted to him. On the information furnished by him, Costeclar was arrested this morning. And Costeclar knows all, since he has been your confidant, Vincent Favoral’s, and my own. When a man has, like him, two or three forgeries in his record, he is sure to speak. He will speak. Perhaps he has already done so, since the police has taken possession of Latterman’s office, with whom I had organized the panic and the tumble in the Mutual Credit stock. What can we do to ward off this blow?”

With a surer glance than her husband, Mme. de Thaller had measured the situation.

“Do not try to ward it off,” she replied: “It would be useless.”

“Because?”

“Because M. de Tregars has found Vincent Favoral; because, at this very moment, they are together, arranging their plans.”

The baron made a terrible gesture.

“Ah, thunder and lightning!” he exclaimed. “I always told you that this stupid fool, Favoral, would cause our ruin. It was so easy for you to find an occasion for him to blow his brains out.”

“Was it so difficult for you to accept M. de Tregars’ offers?”

“It was you who made me refuse.”

“Was it me, too, who was so anxious to get rid of Lucienne?”

For years, Mlle. Cesarine had not seemed so amused; and, in a half whisper, she was humming the famous tune, from “The Pearl of Poutoise,”

“Happy accord! Happy couple!”

M. de Thaller, beside himself, was advancing to seize the baroness: she was drawing back, knowing him, perhaps to be capable of any thing, when suddenly there was a violent knocking at the door.

“In the name of the law!”

It was a commissary of police.

And, whilst surrounded by agents, they were taken to a cab.

* * *

“Orphan on both sides!” exclaimed Mlle. Cesarine, “I am free, then. Now we’ll have some fun!”

At that very moment, M. de Tregars and Mlle. Gilberte reached the Rue St. Gilles.

Hearing that her husband had been found,

“I must see him!” exclaimed Mme. Favoral.

And, in spite of any thing they could tell her, she threw a shawl over her shoulders, and started with Mlle. Gilberte.

When they had entered Mme. Zelie’s apartment, of which they had a key, they found in the parlor, with his back towards them, Vincent Favoral sitting at the table, leaning forward, and apparently writing. Mme. Favoral approached on tiptoe, and over her husband’s shoulder she read what he had just written,

“Affrays, my beloved, eternally-adored mistress, will you forgive me? The money that I was keeping for you, my darling, the proofs which will crush your husband--they have taken every thing from me, basely, by force. And it is my daughter--”

He had stopped there. Surprised at his immobility, Mme. Favoral called,

“Vincent!”

He made no answer. She pushed him with her finger. He rolled to the ground. He was dead.

Three months later the great Mutual Credit suit was tried before the Sixth Court. The scandal was great; but public curiosity was strangely disappointed. As in most of these financial affairs, justice, whilst exposing the most audacious frauds, was not able to unravel the true secret.

She managed, at least, to lay hands upon every thing that the Baron de Thaller had hoped to save. That worthy was condemned to five years’ prison; M. Costeclar got off with three years; and M. Jottras with two. M. Saint Pavin was acquitted.

Arrested for subornation of murder, the former Marquise de Javelle the Baroness de Thaller, was released for want of proper proof. But, implicated in the suit against her husband, she lost three-fourths of her fortune, and is now living with her daughter, whose debut is announced at the Bouffes-Parisiens, or at the Delassements-Comiques.

Already, before that time, Mlle. Lucienne, completely restored, had married Maxence Favoral.

Of the five hundred thousand francs which were returned to her, she applied three hundred thousand to discharge the debts of her father-in-law, and with the rest she induced her husband to emigrate to America. Paris had become odious to both.

Marius and Mlle. Gilberte, who has now become Marquise de Tregars, have taken up their residence at the Chateau de Tregars, three leagues from Quimper. They have been followed in their retreat by Mme. Favoral and by General Count de Villegre.

The greater portion of his father’s fortune, Marius had applied to pay off all the personal creditors of the former cashier of the Mutual Credit, all the trades-people, and also M. Chapelain, old man Desormeaux, and M. and Mme. Desclavettes.

All that is left to the Marquis and Marquise de Tregars is some twenty thousand francs a year, and if they ever lose them, it will not be at the bourse.

The Mutual Credit is quoted at 467.25!