, instead of
destroying them, to continue them, with the certainty of making
something out of them some day or other. There is no lack in Paris of
novelists without imagination, who have not the art of introducing
anything but true stories in their books, and who will not be sorry to
buy a little volume of facts. That will be my way of revenging myself on
this crew of high-toned pirates with whom I have become involved, to my
shame and to my undoing.

It was necessary, however, for me to find some way of occupying my
leisure time. Nothing to do at the office, which has been utterly
deserted since the legal investigation began, except to pile up
summonses of all colors. I have renewed my former practice of writing
for the cook on the second floor, Mademoiselle Seraphine, from whom I
accept some trifling supplies which I keep in the safe, once more a
pantry. The Governor's wife also is very kind to me and stuffs my
pockets whenever I go to see her in her fine apartments in the Chaussee
d'Antin. Nothing is changed there. The same magnificence, the same
comfort; furthermore, a little baby three months old, the seventh, and a
superb nurse, whose Normandy cap creates a sensation when they drive in
the Bois de Boulogne. I suppose that when people are once fairly started
on the railway of fortune they require a certain time to slacken their
speed or come to a full stop. And then, too, that thief of a Paganetti,
to guard against accidents, had put everything in his wife's name.
Perhaps that is why that jabbering Italian has taken a vow of affection
for him which nothing can weaken. He is a fugitive, he is in hiding; but
she is fully convinced that her husband is a little St. John in
guilelessness, a victim of his kindness of heart and credulity. You
should hear her talk: "You know him, Moussiou Passajon. You know whether
he is _e_scrupulous. Why, as true as there's a God, if my husband had
done the dishonest things they accuse him of, I myself--do you hear
me--I myself would have put a gun in his hands, and I would have said:
'Here, Tchecco, blow your head off!'" And the way she opens the nostrils
in her little turned-up nose, and her round black eyes, like two balls
of jet, makes you feel that that little Corsican from Ile Rousse would
have done as she says. I tell you that damned Governor must be a shrewd
fellow to deceive even his wife, to act a part in his own house, where
the cleverest let themselves be seen as they are.