‘M. Chandeau, furious at getting nothing but promises, lost patience, and only waited a favourable opportunity to cease being made a dupe of, as he said. One evening, when M. Denville had gone downstairs in dressing-gown and slippers to buy some trifling thing at the stationer’s opposite, M. Chandeau promptly mounted the stairs, put a padlock on the door, and practically sequestrated in that way the whole of his lodger’s luggage. When the latter came back, purchase in hand, he found on the landing his pitiless creditor, telling him to seek shelter elsewhere. ‘It’s inhuman, isn’t it, monsieur, to send one’s debtor away like that, practically naked? Prayers, promises, threats were not of the slightest use. The young fellow was obliged to make the best of it, to go down into the street, to promenade up and down like a ghost, with the additional chance of perishing with cold, for it was the middle of November. It struck ten o’clock, and the shops began to close. The poor young man did not know where to look for a shelter, the only hope of such presenting itself to him being the arch of a bridge, or the guard-room of a military post. When he got as far as the Point St. Eustache he was accosted by a poor woman--a working woman--who, touched by the story of his deplorable situation, took him to her room, gave him some supper, and kept him like this for a month, sharing everything with him. But the most surprising part of the story is the end. The lover of this poor girl was the servant of a general. The general was looking out for a secretary. The servant was sufficiently interested in this protégé of Providence to share his clothes with him, just as the poor girl had shared her crust of bread, after which he presented M. Denville to his master. The general took a fancy to M. Denville’s face, and engaged him, and took him to the army in Italy, in which he was to command a division. ‘You must know, monsieur, that everybody who goes to Italy and doesn’t happen to be killed, comes back rich. That’s what happened to M. Denville. On his return, he was absolutely bursting with gold. He paid everything he owed to M. Chandeau. Better still, he bought, exactly opposite the hotel, a little mercer’s shop to make a present to the young girl who had so charitably picked him up.’ As may easily be imagined, that kind of picture did not give a particularly agreeable tinge to my dreams. This great man, expelled from the room that I was living in, and promenading down below in the street in white, grasping his roll of paper, appeared to me like the statue of the Commander to Don Juan. In my anxiety I now and again substituted the face and figure of my landlord, holding in one hand his little bill, and the padlock in the other. I no longer slept, and I scarcely ate. The mind was killing the body, and I was certainly getting the worst of this terrible struggle, of which I failed to see the end.