In France, a few years ago, duels, even when fatal in result, did not necessarily entail strict judicial investigation, unless such investigation was provoked by the friends of the fallen man. In the instance here recorded, no one thought proper to take vindictive steps. Fatello's coachman was instructed, and largely bribed, to say that his master had been struck with apoplexy in his carriage, and that, on discovering his condition, he had at once driven him to Dr Pilori. The physician's arrival at the house, in company with the corpse, and the absence of hemorrhage from the wound, rendered it easy to conceal the latter, and gave plausibility to the story, which found general credit. It was not till several days afterwards that a report spread of the real cause of the banker's death. Even then it attained little publicity, and by many was looked upon as a malicious fabrication. Before it got wind, however, the survivors of the domestic drama we have narrated, were far from its scene. By a will made a month before his death, Fatello had left the whole of his great riches, with the exception of some munificent donations to public charities, and of an ample legacy to Captain Carcassonne, to a cousin of his own name in Alsace. But he could not alienate his wife's fortune, or deprive her of the splendid jointure secured to her by her father's cautious greediness; and these constituted very large wealth, with which his widow, shortly after his death, left Paris for her native country. Her Parisian friends and acquaintances were edified, in the highest degree, by the grief she displayed at Fatello's decease. She was disconsolate; and, for at least a day and a half, "_cette pauvre Madame Fatello_" was the prevailing topic of conversation, and the object of universal sympathy. Hen-pecked husbands held her up as a model of conjugal affection; and wicked wives secretly wondered at the poignant regret shown by such a young, rich, and handsome widow, for so ugly, unprepossessing, and morose a man. But it occurred to no one to seek the cause of her excessive grief in a bridal wreath instead of in a funeral shroud; to trace the source of her sorrow to the loss of an expected husband whom she passionately loved, not to that of a departed one, whom she never regretted.