he lay there on that marble slab with the faucet
dripping on him, I fancied I saw him at his dressing table."

"And you said nothing?"

"No, I had known his intentions on that subject for a long while. I let
him go out of the world quietly, in the English fashion, as he wanted
to do. All the same, he might have given me a bit of bread before he
went, when I had been in his service twenty years."

Suddenly he brought his fist down upon the table in a rage:

"When I think that, if I had chosen, I might have entered Mora's service
instead of Monpavon's, that I might have had Louis's place! There was a
lucky dog! Think of the rolls of a thousand he nabbed at his duke's
death!--And the clothes the duke left, shirts by the hundred, a
dressing-gown in blue fox-skin worth more than twenty thousand francs!
And there's that Noel, he must have lined his pockets! Simply by making
haste, _parbleu!_ for he knew it couldn't last long. And there's nothing
to be picked up on Place Vendome now. An old gendarme of a mother who
manages everything. They're selling Saint-Romans, they're selling the
pictures. Half of the house is to let. It's the end of everything."

I confess that I could not help showing my satisfaction; for, after all,
that wretched Jansoulet is the cause of all our misfortunes. A man who
boasted of being so rich and talked about it everywhere. The public was
taken in by it, like the fish that sees scales shining in a net. He has
lost millions, I grant you; but why did he let people think he had
plenty more? They have arrested Bois-l'Hery, but he's the one they
should have arrested.--Ah! if we had had another expert, I am sure it
would have been done long ago.--Indeed, as I said to Francis, one has
only to look at that parvenu of a Jansoulet to see what he amounts to.
Such a face, like a high and mighty brigand!

"And so common," added the former valet.

"Not the slightest moral character."

"Utter lack of breeding.--However, he's under water, and Jenkins too,
and many others with them."

"What! the doctor too? That's too bad. Such a polite, pleasant man!"

"Yes, there's another man that's being sold out. Horses, carriages,
furniture. The courtyard at his house is full of placards and sounds
empty as if death had passed that way. The chateau at Nanterre's for
sale. There were half a dozen 'little Bethlehems' left, and they packed
them off in a cab. It's the crash, I tell you, Pere Passajon, a crash
that we may