"We might easily, in this respect, give particulars which would astonish many people; for we know all; but, at the risk of seeming less well informed than some others of our morning contemporaries, we will observe a silence which our readers will surely appreciate. We do not wish to add, by a premature indiscretion, any thing to the grief of a family already so cruelly stricken; for M. Favoral leaves behind him in the deepest sorrow a wife and two children, - a son of twenty-five, employed in a railroad office, and a daughter of twenty, remarkably handsome, who, a few months ago, came very near marrying M.
C. -.
Next -"
Tears of rage obscured Maxence's sight whilst reading the last few lines of this terrible article. To find himself thus held up to public curiosity, though innocent, was more than he could bear.
And yet he was, perhaps, still more surprised than indignant. He had just learned in that paper more than his father's most intimate friends knew, more than he knew himself. Where had it got its information? And what could be these other details which the writer pretended to know, but did not wish to publish as yet? Maxence felt like running to the office of the paper, fancying that they could tell him there exactly where and under what name M. Favoral led that existence of pleasure and luxury, and who the woman was to whom the article alluded.
But in the mean time he had reached his hotel, - the Hotel des Folies. After a moment of hesitation, "Bash!" he thought, "I have the whole day to call at the office of the paper.
And he started in the corridor of the hotel, a corridor that was so long, so dark, and so narrow, that it gave an idea of the shaft of a mine, and that it was prudent, before entering it, to make sure that no one was coming in the opposite direction. It was from the neighboring theatre, des Folies-Nouvelles (now the Theatre Dejazet), that the hotel had taken its name.
It consists of the rear building of a large old house, and has no frontage on the Boulevard, where nothing betrays its existence, except a lantern hung over a low and narrow door, between a caf and a confectionery-shop. It is one of those hotels, as there are a good many in Paris, somewhat mysterious and suspicious, ill-kept, and whose profits remain a mystery for simple-minded folks. Who occupy the apartments of the first and second story? No one knows.
Never have the most curious of the neighbors discovered the face of a tenant. And yet they are occupied; for often, in the afternoon, a curtain is drawn aside, and a shadow is seen to move.
In the evening, lights are noticed within; and sometimes the sound of a cracked old piano is heard.
Above the second story, the mystery ceases. All the upper rooms, the price of which is relatively modest, are occupied by tenants who may be seen and heard, - clerks like Maxence, shop-girls from the neighborhood, a few restaurant-waiters, and sometimes some poor devil of an actor or chorus-singer from the Theatre Dejazet, the Circus, or the Chateau d'Eau. One of the great advantages of the Hotel des Folies - and Mme. Fortin, the landlady, never failed to point it out to the new tenants, an inestimable advantage, she declared - was a back entrance on the Rue Beranger.
"And everybody knows," she concluded, "that there is no chance of being caught, when one has the good luck of living in a house that has two outlets."
When Maxence entered the office, a small, dark, and dirty room, the proprietors, M. and Mme. Fortin were just finishing their breakfast with an immense bowl of coffee of doubtful color, of which an enormous red cat was taking a share.
"Ah, here is M. Favoral!" they exclaimed.
There was no mistaking their tone. They knew the catastrophe; and the newspaper lying on the table showed how they had heard it.
