lost his place, however, as giver of holy water, obtaining, with
great difficulty, permission to beg at the door of the church. For my
part, I was certain of his guilt; and I managed to have the closest
watch kept upon him; though I relied far more upon myself. Being a man
of means and leisure, I stuck, as you may say, to the skin of my thief,
and did, in order to unmask him, one of the cleverest things of my
career. He was living at that time in the rue du Coeur-Volant. I
succeeded in becoming the tenant of the room adjoining his; and one
night, through a gimlet hole I had drilled in the partition, I saw
my man take the case of diamonds from a very cleverly contrived
hiding-place. He sat for an hour gazing at them and fondling them; he
made them sparkle in the light, he pressed them passionately to his
lips. The man actually loved those diamonds for themselves, and had
never thought of turning them to money."

"I understand," said Cerizet,--"a mania like that of Cardillac, the
jeweller, which has now been dramatized."

"That is just it," returned du Portail; "the poor wretch was in love
with that casket; so that when, shortly after, I entered his room and
told him I knew all, he proposed to me to leave him the life use of
what he called the consolation of his old age, pledging himself to make
Mademoiselle de la Peyrade his sole heir, revealing to me at the same
time the existence of a hoard of gold (to which he was adding every
day), and also the possession of a house and an investment in the
Funds."

"If he made that proposal in good faith," said Cerizet, "it was a
desirable one. The interest of the capital sunk in the diamonds was more
than returned by that from the other property."

"You now see, my dear sir," said du Portail, "that I was not mistaken
in trusting him. All my precautions were well taken; I exacted that he
should occupy a room in the house I lived in, where I could keep a close
eye upon him. I assisted him in making that hiding-place, the secret of
which you discovered so cleverly; but what you did not find out was that
in touching the spring that opened the iron safe you rang a bell in my
apartment, which warned me of any attempt that was made to remove our
treasure."

"Poor Madame Cardinal!" cried Cerizet, good-humoredly, "how far she was
from suspecting it!"

"Now here's the situation," resumed du Portail. "On account of the
interest I feel in the nephew of my old friend, and also, on accou