previously inserted into an empty setting brought to him by a Monsieur
with whose name he was unacquainted. The Duchesse was at that time
in delicate health; and as the Duc's suspicions naturally fell on the
servants, especially on the femme de chambre, who was in great favour
with his wife, he did not like to alarm Madame, nor through her to put
the servants on their guard. He resolved, therefore, to place the matter
in the hands of the famous --------, who was then the pride and ornament
of the Parisian police. And the very night afterwards the Vicomte de
Mauleon was caught and apprehended in the cabinet where the jewels
were kept, and to which he had got access by a false key, or at least
a duplicate key, found in his possession. I should observe that M. de
Mauleon occupied the entresol in the same hotel in which the upper rooms
were devoted to the Duc and Duchesse and their suite. As soon as this
charge against the Vicomte was made known (and it was known the next
morning), the extent of his debts and the utterness of his ruin (before
scarcely conjectured or wholly unheeded) became public through the
medium of the journals, and furnished an obvious motive for the crime
of which he was accused. We Parisians, Monsieur, are subject to the most
startling reactions of feeling. The men we adore one day we execrate the
next. The Vicomte passed at once from the popular admiration one
bestows on a hero to the popular contempt with which one regards a petty
larcener. Society wondered how it had ever condescended to receive
into its bosom the gambler, the duellist, the Don Juan. However, one
compensation in the way of amusement he might still afford to society
for the grave injuries he had done it. Society would attend his trial,
witness his demeanour at the bar, and watch the expression of his
face when he was sentenced to the galleys. But, Monsieur, this wretch
completed the measure of his iniquities. He was not tried at all. The
Duc and Duchesse quitted Paris for Spain, and the Duc instructed his
lawyer to withdraw his charge, stating his conviction of the Vicomte's
complete innocence of any other offence than that which he himself had
confessed."

"What did the Vicomte confess? You omitted to state that."

"The Vicomte, when apprehended, confessed that, smitten by an insane
passion for the Duchesse, which she had, on his presuming to declare it,
met with indignant scorn, he had taken advantage of his lodgment in the
sam