silenced most subjects of private gossip--the _beau monde_ was startled
by the news that the Vicomte (he was then, by his father's death,
Vicomte) de Mauleon had been given into the custody of the police on the
charge of stealing the jewels of the Duchesse de (the wife of a
distinguished foreigner). It seems that some days before this event, the
Duc, wishing to make Madame his spouse an agreeable surprise, had
resolved to have a diamond necklace belonging to her, and which was of
setting so old-fashioned that she had not lately worn it, reset for her
birthday. He therefore secretly possessed himself of the key to an iron
safe in a cabinet adjoining her dressing-room (in which safe her more
valuable jewels were kept), and took from it the necklace. Imagine his
dismay when the jeweller in the Rue Vivienne to whom he carried it
recognized the pretended diamonds as imitation paste which he himself had
some days previously inserted into an empty setting brought to him by a
Monsieur with whose name he was unacquainted. The Duchesse was at that
time in delicate health; and as the Duc's suspicions naturally fell on
the servants, especially on the _femme de chambre_, who was in great
favour with his wife, he did not like to alarm Madame, nor through her to
put the servants on their guard. He resolved, therefore, to place the
matter in the hands of the famous --------, who was then the pride and
ornament of the Parisian police. And the very night afterwards the
Vicomte de Mauleon was caught and apprehended in the cabinet where the
jewels were kept, and to which he had got access by a false key, or at
least a duplicate key, found in his possession. I should observe that
M. de Mauleon occupied the entresol in the same hotel in which the upper
rooms were devoted to the Duc and Duchesse and their suite. As soon as
this charge against the Vicomte was made known (and it was known the next
morning), the extent of his debts and the utterness of his ruin (before
scarcely conjectured or wholly unheeded) became public through the medium
of the journals, and furnished an obvious motive for the crime of which