cken their speed or stop. Besides, this
thief of a Paganetti had, in case of accident, settled everything on his
wife. Perhaps that is why this rag-bag of an Italian woman has such an
unshakable admiration for him. He has fled, he is in hiding; but she
remains convinced that her husband is a little Saint-John of innocence,
the victim of his goodness and credulity. One ought to hear her. "You
know him, you Moussiou Passajon. You know if he is scrupulous. But as
true as there is a God, if my husband had committed such crimes as he is
accused of, I myself--you hear me--I myself would put a blunderbuss in
his hands, and would say to him, 'Here, Tchecco, blow out your brains!'"
and by the way in which she opens the nostrils of her little turned-up
nose, her round eyes, black as jet, one feels that this little Corsican
would have acted as she spoke. He must be very clever, this infernal
governor, to deceive even his wife, to act a part even at home, where
the cleverest let themselves be seen as they really are.

In the meantime all these rogues have good dinners; even Bois l'Hery
has his meals sent in to the prison from the Cafe Anglais, and poor old
Passajon is reduced to live on scraps picked up in the kitchen. Still
we must not grumble too much. There are others more wretched than we
are--witness M. Francis, who came in this morning to the Territorial,
thin, pale, with dirty linen and frayed cuffs, which he still pulled
down by force of habit.

I was at the moment grilling some bacon before the fire in the
board-room, my plate laid on the corner of a marqueterie table, with a
newspaper underneath to preserve it. I invited Monpavon's valet to share
my frugal meal; but since he has waited on a marquis he had come to
think that he formed part of the nobility, and he declined with a
dignified air, perfectly ridiculous with his hollow cheeks. He began by
telling me that he still had no news of his master; that they had
sent him away from the club, all the papers under seal, and a horde of
creditors like locusts on the marquis's small wardrobe. "So that I am
a little short," added M. Francis. That is to say, that he had not the
worth of a radish in his pockets, that he had been sleeping for two days
on the benches in the streets, awakened at each instant by the police,
obliged to rise, to pretend to be drunk so as to seek another shelter.
As to eating, I believe he had not done so for a long time, for he
looked at the food with