“Matters looked very serious for him; but he had the good luck of falling in with a young lawyer who initiated in his case a system of pleading which has since become very popular.  He made no effort to exculpate his client:  he boldly accused the banker.  ’Was it the act of a sensible man,’ he said, ’to trust so young a man with such important sums?  Was it not tempting him beyond his powers of resistance, and almost provoking him to become dishonest?  What, this banker never examined his books for so many months?  What kind of a business was it, where a cashier could so easily take eighty thousand dollars, and remain undiscovered?  And then, what immorality in a banker to speculate on ’Change, and thus to set so bad an example to his young, inexperienced clerks!’

“Justin Chevassat escaped with twenty years’ penal servitude.

“What he was at the galleys, you may imagine from what you know of him.  He played the ‘repentant criminal,’ overflowing with professions of sorrow for the past, and amendment in future, and cringing and crouching at the feet of the officials of the prison.  He carried on this comedy so successfully, that, after three years and a half, he was pardoned.  But he had not lost his time in prison.  The contact with the vilest of criminals had sharpened his wits, and completed his education in rascality.  He came out of prison an accomplished felon.  And even while he still dragged the chain and ball along with him, he was already planning and maturing new plots for the future, which he afterwards executed with success.  He conceived the idea of bursting forth in a new shape, under which no one would ever suspect his former identity.

“How he went about to do this, I am enabled to tell you accurately.  Through his godfather, the valet, who had died before his trial, Justin Chevassat knew the history of the Brevan family in its minutest details.  It was a very sad story.  The old marquis had died insolvent, after having lost his five sons, who had gone abroad to make their fortunes.  The noble family had thus become extinct; but Justin proposed to continue its lineage.  He knew that the Brevans were originally from Maine; that they had formerly owned immense estates in the neighborhood of Mans; and that they had not been there for more than twenty years.  Would they still be remembered in a land where they had once been all powerful?  Most assuredly they would.  Would people take the trouble to inquire minutely what had become of the marquis and his five sons?  As assuredly not.

“Chevassat’s plot was based upon these calculations.