“You say you have no wish to conceal any of your actions; then why did you write this note to one of your companions?” Here he held up the mysterious note.
This time the blow struck. Prosper’s eyes dropped before the inquiring look of the judge.
“I thought,” he stammered, “I wished—”
“You wished to screen this woman?”
“Yes, monsieur; I did. I knew that a man in my condition, accused of a robbery, has every fault, every weakness he has ever indulged in, charged against him as a great crime.”
“Which means that you knew that the presence of a woman at your house would tell very much against you, and that justice would not excuse this scandalous defiance of public morality. A man who respects himself so little as to associate with a worthless woman, does not elevate her to his standard, but he descends to her base level.”
“Monsieur!”
“I suppose you know who the woman is, whom you permit to bear the honest name borne by your mother?”
“Mme. Gypsy was a governess when I first knew her. She was born at Oporto, and came to France with a Portuguese family.”
“Her name is not Gypsy; she has never been a governess, and she is not a Portuguese.”
Prosper began to protest against this statement; but M. Patrigent shrugged his shoulders, and began looking over a large file of papers on his desk.
“Ah, here it is,” he said, “listen: Palmyre Chocareille, born at Paris in 1840, daughter of James Chocareille, undertaker’s assistant, and of Caroline Piedlent, his wife.”
Prosper looked vexed and impatient; he did not know that the judge was reading him this report to convince him that nothing can escape the police.
“Palmyre Chocareille,” he continued, “at twelve years of age was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and remained with him until she was sixteen. Traces of her for one year are lost. At the age of seventeen she is hired as a servant by a grocer on the Rue St. Denis, named Dombas, and remains there three months. She lives out during this same year, 1857, at eight different places. In 1858 she entered the store of a fan-merchant in Choiseul Alley.”
As he read, the judge watched Prosper’s face to observe the effect of these revelations.
“Toward the close of 1858 she was employed as a servant by Madame Munes, and accompanied her to Lisbon. How long she remained in Lisbon, and what she did while she remained there, is not reported. But in 1861 she returned to Paris, and was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for assault and battery. Ah, she returned from Portugal with the name of Nina Gypsy.”
“But I assure you, monsieur,” Prosper began.
“Yes, I understand; this history is less romantic, doubtless, than the one related to you; but then it has the merit of being true. We lose sight of Palmyre Chocareille, called Gypsy, upon her release from prison, but we meet her again six months later, having made the acquaintance of a travelling agent named Caldas, who became infatuated with her beauty, and furnished her a house near the Bastille. She assumed his name for some time, then she deserted him to devote herself to you. Did you ever hear of this Caldas?”
“Never, monsieur.”
“This foolish man so deeply loved this creature that her desertion drove him almost insane from grief. He was a very resolute man, and publicly swore that he would kill his rival if he ever found him. The current report afterward was, that he committed suicide. He certainly sold the furniture of the House occupied by Chocareille, and suddenly disappeared. All the efforts made to discover him proved fruitless.”
The judge stopped a moment as if to give Prosper time for reflection, and then slowly said:
“And this is the woman whom you made your companion, the woman for whom you robbed the bank!”
Once more M. Patrigent was on the wrong track, owing to Fanferlot’s incomplete information.
He had hoped that Prosper would betray himself by uttering some passionate retort when thus wounded to the quick; but he remained impassible. Of all the judge said to him his mind dwelt upon only one word—Caldas, the name of the poor travelling agent who had killed himself.
“At any rate,” insisted M. Patrigent, “you will confess that this girl has caused your ruin.”
“I cannot confess that, monsieur, for it is not true.”
“Yet she is the occasion of your extravagance. Listen.” The judge here drew a bill from the file of papers. “During December you paid her dressmaker, Van Klopen, for two walking dresses, nine hundred francs; one evening dress, seven hundred francs; one domino, trimmed with lace, four hundred francs.”
“I spent this money cheerfully, but nevertheless I was not especially attached to her.”
M. Patrigent shrugged his shoulders.
“You cannot deny the evidence,” said he. “I suppose you will also say that it was not for this girl’s sake you ceased spending your evenings at M. Fauvel’s?”
“I swear that she was not the cause of my ceasing to visit M. Fauvel’s family.”
“Then why did you cease, suddenly, your attentions to a young lady whom you confidently expected to marry, and whose hand you had written to your father to demand for you?”
“I had reasons which I cannot reveal,” answered Prosper with emotion.
The judge breathed freely; at last he had discovered a vulnerable point in the prisoner’s armor.
“Did Mlle. Madeleine banish you?”
Prosper was silent, and seemed agitated.
“Speak,” said M. Patrigent; “I must tell you that this circumstance is one of the most important in your case.”
“Whatever the cost may be, on this subject I am compelled to keep silence.”
“Beware of what you do; justice will not be satisfied with scruples of conscience.”
M. Patrigent waited for an answer. None came.
“You persist in your obstinacy, do you? Well, we will go on to the next question. You have, during the last year, spent fifty thousand francs. Your resources are at an end, and your credit is exhausted; to continue your mode of life was impossible. What did you intend to do?”
“I had no settled plan. I thought it might last as long as it would, and then I——”
“And then you would draw from the safe!”
“Ah, monsieur, if I were guilty, I should not be here! I should never have been such a fool as to return to the bank; I should have fled.”
M. Patrigent could not restrain a smile of satisfaction, and exclaimed:
“Exactly the argument I expected you to use. You showed your shrewdness precisely by staying to face the storm, instead of flying the country.
