es and publish those famous memoirs of
sheriff's officers, which he has been writing for the last ten years,
when he did not dare to go out, and in which he carefully brought out
the characters and peculiarities of all those generous distributors of
stamped paper with whom he had had dealings, their tricks and wiles,
their weaknesses, their jokes, their manner of performing their duties,
sometimes with brutal rudeness and at others with cunning good nature,
now embarrassed and almost ashamed of their work, and again ironically
jovial, as well the artifices of their clerks to get a few crumbs from
their employer's cake. The book will soon be published and Machin, the
Vaudeville writer, has promised him a preface, so that it will be a most
amusing work. You are surprised, eh? Confess that you are absolutely
surprised, and I will lay you any bet you like that you will not guess
how our excellent friend, whose existence is an inexplicable problem,
has been able to settle with his creditors, and suddenly produce the
requisite amount."

"Do get to the facts, confound it," Captain Hardeur said, who was
growing tired of all this verbiage.

"All right, I will get to them as quickly as possible," Royaumont
replied, throwing the stump of his cigar into the fire. "I will clear my
throat and begin. I suppose all of you know that two better friends than
Bordenave and Quillanet do not exist; neither of them could do without
the other, and they have ended by dressing alike, by having the same
gestures, the same laugh, the same walk and the same inflections of
voice, so that one would think that some close bond united them, and
that they had been brought up together from childhood. There is,
however, this great difference between them, that Bordenave is
completely ruined and that all that he possesses are bundles of
mortgages, laughable parchments which attest his ancient race, and
chimerical hopes of inheriting money some day, though these expectations
are already heavily hypothecated. Consequently, he is always on the
look-out for some fresh expedients for raising money, though he is
superbly indifferent about everything, while Sebastien Quillanet, of the
banking house of Quillanet Brothers, must have an income of eight
thousand francs a year, but is descended from an obscure laborer who
managed to secure some of the national property, then he became an army
contractor, speculated on defeat as well as victory, and does not know
now