had contrived in
the course of his service to lay by savings enough to set up a hotel
somewhere in Italy, supposed to be Pisa. To Pisa I repaired, but the man
had left some years; his hotel had not prospered--he had left in debt.
No one could say what had become of him. At last, after a long and
tedious research, I found him installed as manager of a small hotel at
Genoa--a pleasant fellow enough; and after friendly intercourse with
him (of course I lodged at his hotel), I easily led him to talk of his
earlier life and adventures, and especially of his former master, of
whose splendid career in the army of 'La Belle Deesse' he was not a
little proud. It was not very easy to get him to the particular subject
in question. In fact, the affair with the poor false Duval had been so
brief and undistinguished an episode in his master's life, that it was
not without a strain of memory that he reached it.

"By little and little, however, in the course of two or three evenings,
and by the aid of many flasks of Orviette or bottles of Lacrima (wines,
Monsieur, that I do not commend to any one who desires to keep his
stomach sound and his secrets safe), I gathered these particulars.

"Our Don Juan, since the loss of a wife in the first year of marriage,
had rarely visited Paris where he had a domicile--his ancestral hotel
there he had sold.

"But happening to visit that capital of Europe a few months before we
come to our dates at Aix-la-Chapelle, he made acquaintance with Madame
Marigny, a natural daughter of high-placed parents, by whom, of course,
she had never been acknowledged, but who had contrived that she should
receive a good education at a convent; and on leaving it also contrived
that an old soldier of fortune--which means an officer without
fortune--who had served in Algiers with some distinction, should offer
her his hand, and add the modest dot they assigned her to his yet more
modest income. They contrived also that she should understand the
offer must be accepted. Thus Mademoiselle 'Quelque Chose' became Madame
Marigny, and she, on her part, contrived that a year or so later she
should be left a widow. After a marriage, of course the parents washed
their hands of her--they had done their duty. At the time Don Juan made
this lady's acquaintance nothing could be said against her character;
but the milliners and butchers had begun to imply that they would rather
have her money than trust to her character. Don Juan fe