your courage and devotion is only to repeat what every one knows. I
will, therefore, spare your modesty, and continue my relation. Here are
the various particulars we have been able to glean concerning Francois
Germain, son of Madame Georges and the Schoolmaster, properly called
Duresnel:

"About eighteen months since, a young man, named Francois Germain,
arrived in Paris from Nantes, where he had been employed in the
banking-house of Noel and Co.

"It seems, both from the confession of the Schoolmaster as well as from
several letters found upon him, that the scoundrel to whom he had
entrusted his unfortunate offspring, for the purpose of perverting his
young mind, and rendering him one day a worthy assistant to his
unprincipled father in his nefarious schemes, proposed to the young man
to join in a plot for robbing his employers, as well as to forge upon
the firm to a considerable amount. This proposition was received by the
youth with well-merited indignation, but, unwilling to denounce the man
by whom he had been brought up, he first communicated anonymously to his
master the designs projected against the bank, and then privately
quitted Nantes, that he might avoid the rage and fury of those whose
sinful practices his soul sickened and shuddered to think of, far less
to bear the idea of participating in.

"These wretches, aware that they had betrayed themselves to the young
man, and dreading the use he might make of his information, immediately
upon finding he had quitted Nantes followed him to Paris, with the most
sinister intentions of silencing him for ever. After long and
persevering inquiries, they succeeded in discovering his address, but,
happily for the persecuted object of their search, he had a few days
previously encountered the villain who had first sought to corrupt his
principles, and, well divining the motive which had brought him to
Paris, lost no time in changing his abode; and so, for this time, the
Schoolmaster's hapless son escaped his pursuers. Still, however,
following up the scent, they succeeded in tracing the youth to his fresh
abode, 17 Rue du Temple. One evening, however, he narrowly escaped
falling into an ambush laid for him (the Schoolmaster concealed this
circumstance from my lord), but again Providence befriended him, and he
escaped, though too much alarmed to remain in his lodgings; he once more
changed his abode, since which time all traces of him have been lost.
And matters had