ndred and fifty francs a year, had no
servant but a charwoman who came daily for a few hours in the morning,
that Madame Clapart did some of her smaller washing herself, and paid
the postage on her letters daily, being apparently unable to let the sum
accumulate.

There does not exist, or rather, there seldom exists, a criminal who is
wholly criminal. Neither do we ever meet with a dishonest nature which
is completely dishonest. It is possible for a man to cheat his master
to his own advantage, or rake in for himself alone all the hay in
the manger, but, even while laying up capital by actions more or
less illicit, there are few men who never do good ones. If only from
self-love, curiosity, or by way of variety, or by chance, every man has
his moment of beneficence; he may call it his error, he may never do it
again, but he sacrifices to Goodness, as the most surly man sacrifices
to the Graces once or twice in his life. If Moreau's faults can ever
be excused, it might be on the score of his persistent kindness in
succoring a woman of whose favors he had once been proud, and in whose
house he was hidden when in peril of his life.

This woman, celebrated under the Directory for her liaison with one
of the five kings of that reign, married, through that all-powerful
protection, a purveyor who was making his millions out of the
government, and whom Napoleon ruined in 1802. This man, named Husson,
became insane through his sudden fall from opulence to poverty; he flung
himself into the Seine, leaving the beautiful Madame Husson pregnant.
Moreau, very intimately allied with Madame Husson, was at that time
condemned to death; he was unable therefore to marry the widow, being
forced to leave France. Madame Husson, then twenty-two years old,
married in her deep distress a government clerk named Clapart, aged
twenty-seven, who was said to be a rising man. At that period of our
history, government clerks were apt to become persons of importance;
for Napoleon was ever on the lookout for capacity. But Clapart, though
endowed by nature with a certain coarse beauty, proved to have no
intelligence. Thinking Madame Husson very rich, he feigned a great
passion for her, and was simply saddled with the impossibility of
satisfying either then or in the future the wants she had acquired in a
life of opulence. He filled, very poorly, a place in the Treasury that
gave him a salary of eighteen hundred francs; which was all the
new household h