“That cashier, named Favoral,—­we do not hesitate to name him, since his name has already been made public,—­had just sat down to dinner with some friends.  Warned, no one knows how, he succeeded in escaping through a window into the yard of the adjoining house, and up to this hour has succeeded in eluding all search.

  “It seems that these embezzlements had been going on for years,
   but had been skillfully concealed by false entries.

“M.  Favoral had managed to secure the esteem of all who knew him.  He led at home a more than modest existence.  But that was only, as it were, his official life.  Elsewhere, and under another name, he indulged in the most reckless expenses for the benefit of a woman with whom he was madly in love.

  “Who this woman is, is not yet exactly known.

“Some mention a very fascinating young actress, who performs at a theatre not a hundred miles from the Rue Vivienne; others, a lady of the financial high life, whose equipages, diamonds, and dresses are justly famed.

“We might easily, in this respect, give particulars which would astonish many people; for we know all; but, at the risk of seeming less well informed than some others of our morning contemporaries, we will observe a silence which our readers will surely appreciate.  We do not wish to add, by a premature indiscretion, any thing to the grief of a family already so cruelly stricken; for M. Favoral leaves behind him in the deepest sorrow a wife and two children,—­a son of twenty-five, employed in a railroad office, and a daughter of twenty, remarkably handsome, who, a few months ago, came very near marrying M. C. ——.

  “Next—­”

Tears of rage obscured Maxence’s sight whilst reading the last few lines of this terrible article.  To find himself thus held up to public curiosity, though innocent, was more than he could bear.

And yet he was, perhaps, still more surprised than indignant.  He had just learned in that paper more than his father’s most intimate friends knew, more than he knew himself.  Where had it got its information?  And what could be these other details which the writer pretended to know, but did not wish to publish as yet?  Maxence felt like running to the office of the paper, fancying that they could tell him there exactly where and under what name M. Favoral led that existence of pleasure and luxury, and who the woman was to whom the article alluded.

But in the mean time he had reached his hotel,—­the Hotel des Folies.  After a moment of hesitation,

“Bash!” he thought, “I have the whole day to call at the office of the paper.”

And he started in the corridor of the hotel, a corridor that was so long, so dark, and so narrow, that it gave an idea of the shaft of a mine, and that it was prudent, before entering it, to make sure that no one was coming in the opposite direction.  It was from the neighboring theatre, des Folies-Nouvelles (now the Theatre Dejazet), that the hotel had taken its name.