minal records to
concoct schemes as complicated and mysterious as the one I am now
involved in, in order to put into circulation the money they coin. In
all such cases you will find great coming and going of accomplices;
cheques drawn from a distance on the bankers in great commercial
centres like Paris, Stockholm, Rotterdam. Often one hears of poor dupes
compromised. In short, do you not see in the mysterious ways of this
Bricheteau something like an imitation, a reflection of the manoeuvres
to which these criminal workers are forced to have recourse, arranging
them with a talent and a richness of imagination to which a novelist can
scarcely attain?

One thing is certain: there is about me a thick unwholesome atmosphere,
in which I feel that air is lacking and I cannot breathe. However,
assure me, if you can, persuade me, I ask no better, that this is all an
empty dream. But in any case I am determined to have a full explanation
with these two men to-morrow, and to obtain, although so late, more
light than they have yet doled out to me....

Another and yet stranger fact! As I wrote those last words, a noise of
horses' hoofs came from the street. Distrustful now of everything, I
opened my window, and in the dawning light I saw a travelling carriage
before the door of the inn, the postilion in the saddle, and Jacques
Bricheteau talking to some one who was seated in the vehicle. Deciding
quickly on my action, I ran rapidly downstairs; but before I reached the
bottom I heard the roll of wheels and the cracking of the postilion's
whip. At the foot of the staircase I came face to face with Jacques
Bricheteau. Without seeming embarrassed, in fact with the most natural
air in the world, he said to me,--

"What! my dear ward already up?"

"Of course; the least I could do was to say farewell to my excellent
father."

"He did not wish it," replied that damned musician, with an
imperturbability and phlegm that deserved a thrashing; "he feared the
emotions of parting."

"Is he so dreadfully hurried that he could not even give a day to his
new and ardent paternity?"

"The truth is, he is an original; what he came to do, he has done; after
that, to his mind, there is nothing to stay for."

"Ah! I understand; he hastens to those high functions he performs at
that Northern court!"

Jacques Bricheteau could no longer mistake the ironical tone in which
these words were said.

"Until now," he said, "you have shown more faith