"Very well. In the morning you paid a note of a thousand francs."

"Yes, monsieur."

"Moreover, there remained in your desk five hundred francs, and you had
four hundred in your purse when you were arrested. So that altogether,
in twenty-four hours, four thousand five hundred francs--"

Prosper was not discountenanced, but stupefied.

Not being aware of the powerful means of investigation possessed by the
law, he wondered how in so short a time the judge could have obtained
such accurate information.

"Your statement is correct, monsieur," he said finally.

"Where did all this money come from? The evening before you had so
little that you were obliged to defer the payment of a small bill."

"The day to which you allude, I sold through an agent some bonds I had,
about three thousand francs; besides, I took from the safe two thousand
francs in advance on my salary."

The prisoner had given clear answers to all the questions put to him,
and M. Patrigent thought he would attack him on a new point.

"You say you have no wish to conceal any of your actions; then why did
you write this note to one of your companions?" Here he held up the
mysterious note.

This time the blow struck. Prosper's eyes dropped before the inquiring
look of the judge.

"I thought," he stammered, "I wished--"

"You wished to screen this woman?"

"Yes, monsieur; I did. I knew that a man in my condition, accused of
a robbery, has every fault, every weakness he has ever indulged in,
charged against him as a great crime."

"Which means that you knew that the presence of a woman at your house
would tell very much against you, and that justice would not excuse this
scandalous defiance of public morality. A man who respects himself so
little as to associate with a worthless woman, does not elevate her to
his standard, but he descends to her base level."

"Monsieur!"

"I suppose you know who the woman is, whom you permit to bear the honest
name borne by your mother?"

"Mme. Gypsy was a governess when I first knew her. She was born at
Oporto, and came to France with a Portuguese family."

"Her name is not Gypsy; she has never been a governess, and she is not a
Portuguese."

Prosper began to protest against this statement; but M. Patrigent
shrugged his shoulders, and began looking over a large file of papers on
his desk.

"Ah, here it is," he said, "listen: Palmyre Chocareille, born at Paris
in 1840, daughter of James Chocareille, unde