ith
millions at your back, are less likely to respect those subtle and
delicate influences which sometimes, notwithstanding, carry mischief
with them, than we poor, sensitive valetudinarians, without a guinea in
our pockets; and if you will permit me, I will, when I return to-day,
sift the matter for you. I understand woman; it is an art in itself,
though not, perhaps, a very high one. A careless conversation with
Madame Le Prun will let me further into the mystery, than a year spent
in accumulating circumstantial evidence. You may rely on the result."

The fermier-general uttered something between a growl and a grunt, which
might or might not convey assent; and, waving Blassemare towards the
house, walked along the terrace alone; and sat himself down upon the
steps at the further end.

The mental torpor which supervenes under sudden disasters was not, in
the case of the fermier-general, without its dreamy groups of ugly
images in prospect. As the light broke, and the darkness began to melt
eastward into soft crimson mists and streaks of amber, Monsieur Le Prun
rose stiffly from his hard, cold seat, and, with the slow step of a man
irresolute and oppressed with profound wrath and mortification, began to
return homeward.

"Robbers!--thieves!" he muttered bitterly. "How glibly the traitress
echoed the cry! The rascal Blassemare gave the true alarm--she did not
echo _that_. D---- her, and d----him! Robbers, indeed! Thieves!--very
like. I know what they came a thieving for. Upon her balcony--talking in
murmurs--the candle extinguished in such a devil of a hurry--the ready
cry of 'Thieves'--the spring door open for his flight--and the long
delay to find the key. Bah! what proofs are wanting?"

He heard just at this point a cracked voice singing a gay love verse
from an open window. He knew the voice; every association connected with
the performance and the performer jarred upon his nerves.

It was indeed the Visconte de Charrebourg, some of whose early gayety
had returned with his good fortune. He had, such was the pride of his
rich son-in-law, a little household of his own, and kept his state and
his own exorbitantly early hours in a suite of rooms assigned him,
through one of whose windows, arrayed in a velvet cap and gown of
brocade, he was rivalling the lark and greeting the rising sun, and,
while sipping his chocolate in the intervals, moved, with the nimble
irregularity of idle and active-minded age, about his apa