was the constant object of reproof. The boy was
accused of negligence, wasting his time, of spending three hours over a
task which might have been done in less than one. When Derues had
convinced the father, a Parisian bourgeois, that his son was a bad boy
and a good-for-nothing, he came to this man one day in a state of wild
excitement.

"Your son," he said, "ran away yesterday with six hundred livres, with
which I had to meet a bill to-day. He knew where I kept this money, and
has taken it."

He threatened to go before a magistrate and denounce the thief, and was
only appeased by being paid the sum he claimed to have lost. But he had
gone out with the lad the evening before, and returned alone in the early
hours of the morning.

However, the veil which concealed the truth was becoming more and more
transparent every day. Three bankruptcies had diminished the
consideration he enjoyed, and people began to listen to complaints and
accusations which till now had been considered mere inventions designed
to injure him. Another attempt at trickery made him feel it desirable to
leave the neighbourhood.

He had rented a house close to his own, the shop of which had been
tenanted for seven or eight years by a wine merchant. He required from
this man, if he wished to remain where he was, a sum of six hundred
livres as a payment for goodwill. Although the wine merchant considered
it an exorbitant charge, yet on reflection he decided to pay it rather
than go, having established a good business on these premises, as was
well known. Before long a still mare arrant piece of dishonesty gave him
an opportunity for revenge. A young man of good family, who was boarding
with him in order to gain some business experience, having gone into
Derues' shop to make some purchases, amused himself while waiting by idly
writing his name on a piece of blank paper lying on the counter; which he
left there without thinking more about it. Derues, knowing the young man
had means, as soon as he had gone, converted the signed paper into a
promissory note for two thousand livres, to his order, payable at the
majority of the signer. The bill, negotiated in trade, arrived when due
at the wine merchant's, who, much surprised, called his young boarder and
showed him the paper adorned with his signature. The youth was utterly
confounded, having no knowledge of the bill whatever, but nevertheless
could not deny his signature. On examining the p