particulars--I happen to know them exactly, because I made an official
visit, on the first occasion, to the house, to collect evidence; and
although I did not go down there, upon the second, the papers came
before me, and I dictated the official letter dispatched to the
relations of the people who had disappeared; they had applied to the
government to investigate the affair. We had letters from the same
relations more than two years later, from which we learned that the
missing men had never turned up."

He took a pinch of snuff, and looked steadily at me.

"Never! I shall relate all that happened, so far as we could discover.
The French noble, who was the Chevalier Chateau Blassemare, unlike most
_emigres_ had taken the matter in time, sold a large portion of his
property before the revolution had proceeded so far as to render that
next to impossible, and retired with a large sum. He brought with him
about half a million of francs, the greater part of which he invested in
the French funds; a much larger sum remained in Austrian land and
securities. You will observe then that this gentleman was rich, and
there was no allegation of his having lost money, or being in any way
embarrassed. You see?"

I assented.

"This gentleman's habits were not expensive in proportion to his means.
He had suitable lodgings in Paris; and for a time, society, and
theaters, and other reasonable amusements, engrossed him. He did not
play. He was a middleaged man, affecting youth, with the vanities which
are usual in such persons; but, for the rest, he was a gentle and polite
person, who disturbed nobody--a person, you see, not likely to provoke