“I am all right,” he said, like an echo.  Then, making a great effort, he continued,—­

“Justin Chevassat was at twenty precisely what you know him to be as Maxime de Brevan,—­a profound dissembler, a fierce egotist devoured by vanity, in fine, a man of ardent passions, and capable of anything to satisfy his desires.

“The hope of getting rich at once by some great stroke was already so deeply rooted in his mind, that it gave him the strength to change his habits and manner of life from one day to another, and to keep up the deceit with a perseverance unheard of at his age.  This lazy, profligate gambler rose with the day, worked ten hours a day, and became the model of all clerks.  He had resolved to win the favor of his patron, and to be trusted.  He succeeded in doing it by the most consummate hypocrisy.  So that, only two years after he had first been admitted into the house, he had already been promoted to a place which conferred upon him the keeping of all the valuables of the firm.

“This occurred before those accidents which have, since that time, procured for the keepers of other people’s money such a sad reputation.  Nowadays it seems almost an ordinary event to hear of some cashier’s running away with the funds intrusted to his keeping; and no one is astonished.  To create a sensation by such an occurrence, the sum must be almost fabulous, say, two or three millions.  And, even in that case, the loser is by no means the man in whom the world is most interested.

“At the time of which I am now speaking, defalcations were quite rare as yet.  Financial companies and brokers did not contemplate being robbed by their own clerks as one of the ordinary risks.  When they knew the keys of their safe to be in the hands of an honest man, whose family and mode of life were well known, they slept soundly.  Justin Chevassat’s patron was thus sleeping soundly for ten months, when one Sunday he was specially in need of certain bonds which Justin used to keep in one of the drawers of his desk.  He did not like to have his clerk hunted up on such a day; so he simply sent for a locksmith to open the drawer.

“The first thing he saw was a draft signed by himself; and yet he had never put his name to such a paper.  Still, most assuredly, it was his signature; he would have sworn to it in court.  And yet he was as sure as he was standing there, that it was not he who had put his name, and the somewhat complicated ornament belonging to it, where he saw it written.

“His first amazement was succeeded by grievous apprehension.  He had the other drawers opened likewise, searched them, and soon discovered all the details of a formidable and most ingenious plan, by which he was to be robbed at a single blow of more than a million.