“Is it possible?  So clear-sighted as you are! . . .” murmured a lady.

“These adventurers are so cunning.  But we found out everything through Berthier.  His friend is a beggar that plays the flute.  He is friendly with a person who lets furnished lodgings in the Rue du Mail and some tailor or other. . . .  We found out that he had led a most disreputable life, and no amount of fortune would be enough for a scamp that has run through his mother’s property.”

“Why, Mlle. de Marville would have been wretched!” said Mme. Berthier.

“How did he come to your house?” asked old Mme. Lebas.

“It was M. Pons.  Out of revenge, he introduced this fine gentleman to us, to make us ridiculous. . . .  This Brunner (it is the same name as Fontaine in French)—­this Brunner, that was made out to be such a grandee, has poor enough health, he is bald, and his teeth are bad.  The first sight of him was enough for me; I distrusted him from the first.”

“But how about the great fortune that you spoke of?” a young married woman asked shyly.

“The fortune was not nearly so large as they said.  These tailors and the landlord and he all scraped the money together among them, and put all their savings into this bank that they are starting.  What is a bank for those that begin in these days?  Simply a license to ruin themselves.  A banker’s wife may lie down at night a millionaire and wake up in the morning with nothing but her settlement.  At first word, at the very first sight of him, we made up our minds about this gentleman—­he is not one of us.  You can tell by his gloves, by his waistcoat, that he is a working man, the son of a man that kept a pot-house somewhere in Germany; he has not the instincts of a gentleman; he drinks beer, and he smokes—­smokes? ah! madame, twenty-five pipes a day! . . .  What would have become of poor Lili? . . .  It makes me shudder even now to think of it.  God has indeed preserved us!  And besides, Cecile never liked him. . . .  Who would have expected such a trick from a relative, an old friend of the house that had dined with us twice a week for twenty years?  We have loaded him with benefits, and he played his game so well, that he said Cecile was his heir before the Keeper of the Seals and the Attorney General and the Home Secretary! . . .  That Brunner and M. Pons had their story ready, and each of them said that the other was worth millions! . . .  No, I do assure you, all of you would have been taken in by an artist’s hoax like that.”

In a few weeks’ time, the united forces of the Camusot and Popinot families gained an easy victory in the world, for nobody undertook to defend the unfortunate Pons, that parasite, that curmudgeon, that skinflint, that smooth-faced humbug, on whom everybody heaped scorn; he was a viper cherished in the bosom of the family, he had not his match for spite, he was a dangerous mountebank whom nobody ought to mention.