nor to endure the insolence of his men. The first outlay frightened me
a little; but that is made now, and I am delighted. We will save it in
something else."

"In laces, no doubt," thought Mademoiselle Marguerite. She was intensely
exasperated, and on regaining her chamber she said to herself, for the
tenth time, "What do they take me for? Do they think me an idiot to
flaunt the millions they have stolen from my father--that they have
stolen from me--before my eyes in this fashion? A common thief would
take care not to excite suspicion by a foolish expenditure of the fruits
of his knavery, but they--they have lost their senses."

Madame Leon was already in bed, and when Mademoiselle Marguerite was
satisfied that she was asleep, she took her letter from her trunk, and
added this post-script: "P. S.--It is impossible to retain the shadow of
a doubt, M. and Madame de Fondege have spent certainly twenty thousand
francs to-day. This audacity must arise from a conviction that no proofs
of the crime they have committed exist. Still they continue to talk
to me about their son, Lieutenant Gustave. He will be presented to me
to-morrow. To-morrow, also, between three and four, I shall be at
the house of a man who can perhaps discover Pascal's hiding-place for
me,--the house of M. Isidore Fortunat. I hope to make my escape easily
enough, for at that same hour, Madame Leon has an appointment with the
Marquis de Valorsay."

X.

The old legend of Achilles's heel will be eternally true. A man may be
humble or powerful, feeble or strong, but there are none of us without
some weak spot in our armor, a spot vulnerable beyond all others, a
certain place where wounds prove most dangerous and painful. M. Isidore
Fortunat's weak place was his cash-box. To attack him there was to
endanger his life--to wound him at a point where all his sensibility
centred. For it was in this cash-box and not in his breast that his
heart really throbbed. His safe made him happy or dejected. Happy when
it was filled to overflowing by some brilliant operation, and dejected
when he saw it become empty as some imprudent transaction failed.

This then explains his frenzy on that ill-fated Sunday, when, after
being brutally dismissed by M. Wilkie, he returned to his rooms in the
company of his clerk, Victor Chupin. This explains, too, the intensity
of the hatred he now felt for the Marquis de Valorsay and the Viscount
de Coralth. The former, the marqui