ok a basket-load
of the goods she required from the rue Comtesse d'Artois; and it excited
the pity of all beholders to see this weakly young man, panting and
sweating under his heavy burden, refusing any reward, and labouring
merely for the pleasure of obliging, and from natural kindness of heart!
The poor widow, whose spoils he was already coveting, was completely
duped. She rejected the advice of her brother-in-law, and only listened
to the concert of praises sung by neighbours much edified by Derues'
conduct, and touched by the interest he appeared to show her. Often he
found occasion to speak of her, always with the liveliest expressions of
boundless devotion. These remarks were repeated to the good woman, and
seemed all the more sincere to her as they appeared to have been made
quite casually, and she never suspected they were carefully calculated
and thought out long before.

Derues carried dishonesty as far as possible, but he knew how to stop
when suspicion was likely to be aroused, and though always planning
either to deceive or to hurt, he was never taken by surprise. Like the
spider which spreads the threads of her web all round her, he concealed
himself in a net of falsehood which one had to traverse before arriving
at his real nature. The evil destiny of this poor woman, mother of four
children, caused her to engage him as her shopman in the year 1767,
thereby signing the warrant for her own ruin.

Derues began life under his new mistress with a master-stroke. His
exemplary piety was the talk of the whole quarter, and his first care
had been to request Madame Legrand to recommend him a confessor. She
sent him to the director of her late husband, Pere Cartault, of the
Carmelite order, who, astonished at the devotion of his penitent, never
failed, if he passed the shop, to enter and congratulate Madame Legrand
on the excellent acquisition she had made in securing this young man,
who would certainly bring her a blessing along with him. Derues affected
the greatest modesty, and blushed at these praises, and often, when
he saw the good father approaching, appeared not to see him, and found
something to do elsewhere; whereby the field was left clear for his too
credulous panegyrists.

But Pere Cartault appeared too indulgent, and Derues feared that
his sins were too easily pardoned; and he dared not find peace in an
absolution which was never refused. Therefore, before the year was out,
he chose a second confe