ook his head, and suddenly,

"Do you know the Baron de Thaller?" he asked. And, without giving
Marius time to answer,

"He is a German," he went on, "a Prussian. His father was a
cab-driver in Berlin, and his mother waiting-maid in a brewery. At
the age of eighteen, he was compelled to leave his country, owing
to some petty swindle, and came to take up his residence in Paris.
He found employment in the office of a stock-broker, and was living
very poorly, when he made the acquaintance of a young laundress
named Affrays, who had for a lover a very wealthy gentleman, the
Marquis de Tregars, whose weakness was to pass himself off for a
poor clerk. Affrays and Thaller were well calculated to agree.
They did agree, and formed an association,--she contributing her
beauty; he, his genius for intrigue; both, their corruption and
their vices. Soon after they met, she gave birth to a child, a
daughter; whom she intrusted to some poor gardeners at Louveciennes,
with the firm and settled intention to leave her there forever.
And yet it was upon this daughter, whom they firmly hoped never to
see again, that the two accomplices were building their fortune.

"It was in the name of that daughter that Affrays wrung
considerable sums from the Marquis de Tregars. As soon as Thaller
and she found themselves in possession of six hundred thousand
francs, they dismissed the marquis, and got married. Already, at
that time, Thaller had taken the title of baron, and lived in some
style. But his first speculations were not successful. The
revolution of 1848 finished his ruin, and he was about being expelled
from the bourse, when he found me on his way,--I, poor fool, who
was going about everywhere, asking how I could advantageously invest
my hundred and fifty thousand francs."

He was speaking in a hoarse voice, shaking his clinched fist in the
air, doubtless at the Baron de Thaller.

"Unfortunately," he resumed, "it was only much later that I
discovered all this. At the moment, M. de Thaller dazzled me. His
friends, Saint Pavin and the bankers Jottras, proclaimed him the
smartest and the most honest man in France. Still I would not have
given my money, if it had not been for the baroness. The first time
that I was introduced to her, and that she fixed upon me her great
black eyes, I felt myself moved to the deepest recesses of my soul.
In order to see her again, I invited her, together with her husband
and her husband's frien