police went to search his rooms. He had been mad, mad
enough to be placed in confinement.

To begin, nobody had ever seen a flat in such an extraordinary
condition, the kitchen a perfect stable, the drawing-room in a state of
utter abandonment with its Louis XIV. furniture gray with dust, and the
dining-room all topsy-turvy, the old oak tables and chairs being piled
up against the window as if to shut out every ray of light, though
nobody could tell why. The only properly kept room was that in which
Reine had formerly slept, which was as clean as a sanctuary, with its
pitch-pine furniture as bright as if it had been polished every day. But
the apartment in which Morange's madness became unmistakably manifest
was his own bedchamber, which he had turned into a museum of souvenirs,
covering its walls with photographs of his wife and daughter. Above a
table there, the wall facing the window quite disappeared from view,
for a sort of little chapel had been set up, decked with a multitude of
portraits. In the centre were photographs of Valerie and Reine, both
of them at twenty years of age, so that they looked like twin sisters;
while symmetrically disposed all around was an extraordinary number of
other portraits, again showing Valerie and Reine, now as children, now
as girls, and now as women, in every sort of position, too, and every
kind of toilet. And below them on the table, like an offering on an
altar, was found more than one hundred thousand francs, in gold, and
silver, and even copper; indeed, the whole fortune which Morange had
been saving up for several years by eating only dry bread, like a
pauper.

At last, then, one knew what he had done with his savings; he had given
them to his dead wife and daughter, who had remained his will, passion,
and ambition. Haunted by remorse at having killed them while dreaming
of making them rich, he reserved for them that money which they had so
keenly desired, and which they would have spent with so much ardor. It
was still and ever for them that he earned it, and he took it to
them, lavished it upon them, never devoting even a tithe of it to any
egotistical pleasure, absorbed as he was in his vision-fraught worship
and eager to pacify and cheer their spirits. And the whole neighborhood
gossiped endlessly about the old mad gentleman who had let himself die
of wretchedness by the side of a perfect treasure, piled coin by coin
upon a table, and for twenty years past tendered to