"Every morning, precisely at nine o'clock, he left home to go to M.
de Thaller's office."

"The whole neighborhood knows that, madame."

"At half-past five he came home."

"That, also, is a well-known fact."

"After dinner he went out to play a game, but it was his only
amusement; and at eleven o'clock he was always in bed."

"Perfectly correct."

"Well, then, sir, where could M. Favoral have found time to abandon
himself to the excesses of which you accuse him?"

Imperceptibly the commissary of police shrugged his shoulders.

"Far from me, madame," he uttered, "to doubt your good faith. What
matters it, moreover, whether your husband spent in this way or in
that way the sums which he is charged with having appropriated? But
what do your objections prove? Simply that M. Favoral was very
skillful, and very much self-possessed. Had he breakfasted when he
left you at nine? No. Pray, then, where did he breakfast? In a
restaurant? Which? Why did he come home only at half-past five,
when his office actually closed at three o'clock? Are you quite
sure that it was to the Cafe Turc that he went every evening?
Finally, why do not you say anything of the extra work which he
always had to attend to, as he pretended, once or twice a month?