was his favorite phrase on great occasions. Then he pointed to the
bundles of bank notes spread out before him in the narrow bands which
are used to confine those fugitive documents, always ready to fly away.

"Do you know what that is?" he said to Georges, with an air of triumph.
"That is Sidonie's house in the country!"

CHAPTER XII. A LETTER

"TO M. FRANTZ RISLER,

"Engineer of the Compagnie Francaise,
"Ismailia, Egypt.

"Frantz, my boy, it is old Sigismond who is writing to you. If I
knew better how to put my ideas on paper, I should have a very long
story to tell you. But this infernal French is too hard, and
Sigismond Planus is good for nothing away from his figures. So I
will come to the point at once.

"Affairs in your brother's house are not as they should be. That
woman is false to him with his partner. She has made her husband a
laughing-stock, and if this goes on she will cause him to be looked
upon as a rascal. Frantz, my boy, you must come home at once. You
are the only one who can speak to Risler and open his eyes about
that little Sidonie. He would not believe any of us. Ask leave of
absence at once, and come.

"I know that you have your bread to earn out there, and your future
to assure; but a man of honor should think more of the name his
parents gave him than of anything else. And I tell you that if you
do not come at once, a time will come when the name of Risler will
be so overwhelmed with shame that you will not dare to bear it.

"SIGISMOND PLANUS,
"Cashier."

CHAPTER XIII. THE JUDGE

Those persons who live always in doors, confined by work or infirmity to
a chair by the window, take a deep interest in the people who pass, just
as they make for themselves a horizon of the neighboring walls, roofs,
and windows.

Nailed to their place, they live in the life of the streets; and the
busy men and women who pass within their range of vision, sometimes
every day at the same hour, do not suspect that they serve as the
mainspring of other lives, that interested eyes watch for their coming
and miss them if they happen to go to their destination by another road.

The Delobelles, left to themselves all day, indulged in this sort of
silent observation. Their window was narrow, and the mother, whose eyes
were beginning to weaken as the result of hard usage, sat near the light
agains