“It must be from some of my clerks,” he finally said, “someone who is angry with me for refusing to raise his salary; or perhaps it is the one that I dismissed the other day.”

Clinging to this idea, he thought over all the young men in his bank; but not one could he believe capable of resorting to so base a vengeance.

Then he wondered where the letter had been posted, thinking this might throw some light upon the mystery.  He looked at the envelope, and read the post-mark: 

“Rue du Cardinal Lemoine.”

This fact told him nothing.

Once more he read the letter, spelling over each word, and trying to put a different construction on the horrible phrases that stared him in the face.

It is generally agreed that an anonymous letter should be treated with silent contempt, and cast aside as the malicious lies of a coward who dares not say to a man’s face what he secretly commits to paper, and forces upon him.

This is all very well in theory, but is difficult to practise when the anonymous letter comes.  You throw it in the fire, it burns; but, although the paper is destroyed by the flames, doubt remains.  Suspicion arises from its ashes, like a subtle poison penetrates the inmost recesses of the mind, weakens its holiest beliefs, and destroys its faith.

The trail of the serpent is left.

The wife suspected, no matter how unjustly, is no longer the wife in whom her husband trusted as he would trust himself:  the pure being who was above suspicion no longer exists.  Suspicion, no matter whence the source, has irrevocably tarnished the brightness of his idol.

Unable to struggle any longer against these conflicting doubts, M. Fauvel determined to resolve them by showing the letter to his wife; but a torturing thought, more terrible than any he had yet suffered, made him sink back in his chair in despair.

“Suppose it be true!” he muttered to himself; “suppose I have been miserably duped!  By confiding in my wife, I shall put her on her guard, and lose all chance of discovering the truth.”

Thus were realized all Verduret’s presumptions.

He had said, “If M. Fauvel does not yield to his first impulse, if he stops to reflect, we have time to repair the harm done.”

After long and painful meditation, the banker finally decided to wait, and watch his wife.

It was a hard struggle for a man of his frank, upright nature, to play the part of a domestic spy, and jealous husband.

Accustomed to give way to sudden bursts of anger, but quickly mastering them, he would find it difficult to be compelled to preserve his self-restraint, no matter how dreadful the discoveries might be.  When he collected the proofs of guilt one by one, he must impose silence upon his resentment, until fully assured of possessing certain evidence.

There was one simple means of ascertaining whether the diamonds had been pawned.