OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

PART I


I

There is not, perhaps, in all Paris, a quieter street than the Rue
St. Gilles in the Marais, within a step of the Place Royale. No
carriages there; never a crowd. Hardly is the silence broken by
the regulation drums of the Minims Barracks near by, by the chimes
of the Church of St. Louis, or by the joyous clamors of the pupils
of the Massin School during the hours of recreation.

At night, long before ten o'clock, and when the Boulevard
Beaumarchais is still full of life, activity, and noise, every thing
begins to close. One by one the lights go out, and the great windows
with diminutive panes become dark. And if, after midnight, some
belated citizen passes on his way home, he quickens his step, feeling
lonely and uneasy, and apprehensive of the reproaches of his
concierge, who is likely to ask him whence he may be coming at so
late an hour.

In such a street, every one knows each other: houses have no mystery;
families, no secrets,--a small town, where idle curiosity has always
a corner of the veil slyly raised, where gossip flourishes as rankly
as the grass on the street.

Thus on the afternoon of the 27th of April, 1872 (a Saturday), a fact
which anywhere else might have passed unnoticed was attracting
particular attention.

A man some thirty years of age, wearing the working livery of
servants of the upper class,--the long striped waistcoat with
sleeves, and the white linen apron,--was going from door to door.

"Who can the man be looking for?" wondered the idle neighbors,
closely watching his evolutions.

He was not looking for any one. To such as he spoke to, he stated
that he had been sent by a cousin of his, an excellent cook, who,
before taking a place in the neighborhood, was anxious to have all
possible information on the subject of her prospective masters. And
then, "Do you know M. Vincent Favoral?" he would ask.

Concierges and shop-keepers knew no one better; for it was more than
a quarter of a century before, that M. Vincent Favoral, the day after
his wedding, had come to settle in the Rue St. Gilles; and there
his two children were born,--his son M. Maxence, his daughter Mlle.
Gilberte.