sire, the knowledge can well remain the
property of two persons only."

"My friend," Madame said on the impulse of the kindest heart in the
world, "I think your strength lies in the depth of your thought for
others."

"The Vicomte was tempted," I went on. "He had in his nature a latent
love of money. The same is in many natures, but the majority have
never the opportunity of gratifying it. He did what ninety-nine out of
a hundred other men would have done--what I think I should have done
myself. He yielded. He had at hand a ready tool and the cleverest aid
in Charles Miste, who actually carried the money, but for some
reason--possibly because he was unable to forge the necessary
signatures--could not obtain the cash for the drafts without the
Vicomte's assistance. Unconsciously, I repeatedly prevented their
meeting, and thus frustrated the design."

All the while Madame sat and looked down into the valley. Her
self-command was infinite, for she must have had a thousand questions
to ask.

"It was, I think, my patron's intention to go to the New World with
his great wealth and there begin life afresh--this, however, is one of
the details that must ever remain incomprehensible. Possibly when the
temptation gripped him he ceased to reflect at all--else he must
assuredly have recognised all that he was sacrificing for the mere
possession of money that he could never live to spend. Men usually pay
too high a price for their desires. In order to carry out his scheme
he conceived and accomplished--with a strange cunning, which develops,
I am told, after crime--a clever ruse."

Madame turned and looked at me for a moment.

"We must think of him, Madame," I explained, "as one suffering from a
mental disease; for the love of money in its acute stages is nothing
else, lacking, as it assuredly does, common sense. The most singular
part of his mental condition was the rapidity and skill with which he
turned events to his own advantage, and seized each opportunity for
the furtherance of his ends. The Baron Giraud died at the Hotel
Clericy--here was a chance. The Vicomte, with a cunning which was
surely unnatural--you remember his strange behaviour at that time,
how he locked himself in his study for hours together--took therefore
the Baron's body from the coffin, dressed it in his own garments,
placed in the clothing his own purse, and pocket-book, and cast the
body into the Seine. I have had the coffin that we laid in Pere la