Besides, I must occupy my leisure time.  There is nothing to do at the bank, which is completely deserted since the judicial inquiry began, except to arrange the bills of all colours.  I have again undertaken the writing for the cook on the second floor, Mlle. Seraphine, from whom I accept in return some little refreshment, which I keep in the strong-box, once more become a provision safe.  The wife of the governor is also very good to me, and stuffs my pockets each time I go to see her in her great rooms on the Chaussee d’Antin.  There nothing has changed; the same luxury, the same comfort, also a three-months’-old baby—­the seventh—­and a superb nurse, whose Norman cap is the admiration of the Bois de Boulogne.  It seems that once started on the rails of fortune, people need a certain time to slacken their speed or stop.  Besides, this thief of a Paganetti had, in case of accident, settled everything on his wife.  Perhaps that is why this rag-bag of an Italian woman has such an unshakable admiration for him.  He has fled, he is in hiding; but she remains convinced that her husband is a little Saint-John of innocence, the victim of his goodness and credulity.  One ought to hear her.  “You know him, you Moussiou Passajon.  You know if he is scrupulous.  But as true as there is a God, if my husband had committed such crimes as he is accused of, I myself—­you hear me—­I myself would put a blunderbuss in his hands, and would say to him, ‘Here, Tchecco, blow out your brains!’” and by the way in which she opens the nostrils of her little turned-up nose, her round eyes, black as jet, one feels that this little Corsican would have acted as she spoke.  He must be very clever, this infernal governor, to deceive even his wife, to act a part even at home, where the cleverest let themselves be seen as they really are.

In the meantime all these rogues have good dinners; even Bois l’Hery has his meals sent in to the prison from the Cafe Anglais, and poor old Passajon is reduced to live on scraps picked up in the kitchen.  Still we must not grumble too much.  There are others more wretched than we are—­witness M. Francis, who came in this morning to the Territorial, thin, pale, with dirty linen and frayed cuffs, which he still pulled down by force of habit.

I was at the moment grilling some bacon before the fire in the board-room, my plate laid on the corner of a marqueterie table, with a newspaper underneath to preserve it.  I invited Monpavon’s valet to share my frugal meal; but since he has waited on a marquis he had come to think that he formed part of the nobility, and he declined with a dignified air, perfectly ridiculous with his hollow cheeks.  He began by telling me that he still had no news of his master; that they had sent him away from the club, all the papers under seal, and a horde of creditors like locusts on the marquis’s small wardrobe.  “So that I am a little short,” added M. Francis.  That is to say, that he had not the