“I have stolen!  I am lost!  Costeclar alone can save me; and he will save me if you become his wife.”

M. Favoral’s pleasant behavior during the siege was quite natural.  Then he had no fears; and one could understand how in the most critical hours of the Commune, when Paris was in flames, he could have exclaimed almost cheerfully,

“Ah! this time it is indeed the final liquidation.”

Doubtless, in the bottom of his heart, he wished that Paris might be destroyed, and, with it, the evidences of his crime.  And perhaps he was not the only one to form that impious wish.

“That’s why, then,” exclaimed Maxence,—­“that’s why my father treated me so rudely:  that’s why he so obstinately persisted in closing the offices of the Mutual Credit against me.”

He was interrupted by a violent ringing of the door-bell.  He looked at the clock:  ten o’clock was about to strike.

“Who can call so late?” said Mme. Favoral.

Something like a discussion was heard in the hall,—­a voice hoarse with anger, and the servant’s voice.

“Go and see who’s there,” said Gilberte to her brother.

It was useless; the servant appeared.

“It’s M. Bertan,” she commenced, “the baker—­” He had followed her, and, pushing her aside with his robust arm, he appeared himself.  He was a man about forty years of age, tall, thin, already bald, and wearing his beard trimmed close.

“M.  Favoral?” he inquired.

“My father is not at home,” replied Maxence.

“It’s true, then, what I have just been told?”

“What?”

“That the police came to arrest him, and he escaped through a window.”

“It’s true,” replied Maxence gently.

The baker seemed prostrated.

“And my money?” he asked.

“What money?”

“Why, my ten thousand francs!  Ten thousand francs which I brought to M. Favoral, in gold, you hear? in ten rolls, which I placed there, on that very table, and for which he gave me a receipt.  Here it is,—­his receipt.”

He held out a paper; but Maxence did not take it.

“I do not doubt your word, sir,” he replied; “but my father’s business is not ours.”

“You refuse to give me back my money?”

“Neither my mother, my sister, nor myself, have any thing.”

The blood rushed to the man’s face, and, with a tongue made thick by anger,

“And you think you are going to pay me off in that way?” he exclaimed.  “You have nothing!  Poor little fellow!  And will you tell me, then, what has become of the twenty millions your father has stolen? for he has stolen twenty millions.  I know it:  I have been told so.  Where are they?”

“The police, sir, has placed the seals over my fathers papers.”