of
his funds."

Papa Ravinet's voice changed so perceptibly as he uttered these last
words, that Daniel and Henrietta, with one impulse, asked him,--

"Is anything the matter, sir?"

He did not make any reply; but his sister, Mrs. Bertolle, said,--

"No, there is nothing the matter with my brother;" and she looked at him
with a nod of encouragement.

"I am all right," he said, like an echo. Then, making a great effort, he
continued,--

"Justin Chevassat was at twenty precisely what you know him to be as
Maxime de Brevan,--a profound dissembler, a fierce egotist devoured by
vanity, in fine, a man of ardent passions, and capable of anything to
satisfy his desires.

"The hope of getting rich at once by some great stroke was already so
deeply rooted in his mind, that it gave him the strength to change his
habits and manner of life from one day to another, and to keep up the
deceit with a perseverance unheard of at his age. This lazy, profligate
gambler rose with the day, worked ten hours a day, and became the model
of all clerks. He had resolved to win the favor of his patron, and to be
trusted. He succeeded in doing it by the most consummate hypocrisy. So
that, only two years after he had first been admitted into the house,
he had already been promoted to a place which conferred upon him the
keeping of all the valuables of the firm.

"This occurred before those accidents which have, since that time,
procured for the keepers of other people's money such a sad reputation.
Nowadays it seems almost an ordinary event to hear of some cashier's
running away with the funds intrusted to his keeping; and no one is
astonished. To create a sensation by such an occurrence, the sum must be
almost fabulous, say, two or three millions. And, even in that case, the
loser is by no means the man in whom the world is most interested.

"At the time of which I am now speaking, defalcations were quite rare as
yet. Financial companies and brokers did not contemplate being robbed by
their own clerks as one of the ordinary risks. When they knew the keys
of their safe to be in the hands of an honest man, whose family and mode
of life were well known, they slept soundly. Justin Chevassat's patron
was thus sleeping soundly for ten months, when one Sunday he was
specially in need of certain bonds which Justin used to keep in one of
the drawers of his desk. He did not like to have his clerk hunted up on
such a day; so he simply sent for a loc