'You are,' continued M. de Veron, 'entitled to a month's salary, in lieu of that period of notice--one hundred francs, with which you may credit yourself in the cash account you will please to balance and bring me as quickly as possible.' 'Sir!--sir!' again bewilderedly iterated the panic-stricken clerk, as he turned distractedly from father to son--'Sir!' 'My words are plain enough, I think,' observed M. de Veron, coolly tapping and opening his snuff-box from which he helped himself to a hearty pinch. 'You are discharged with one hundred francs, a month's salary in lieu of warning, in your pocket. You have now only to bring your accounts; they are correct, of course; I, finding them so, sign your _livret_, and there is an end of the matter.' Edouard le Blanc made a step or two towards the door, and then, as if overwhelmed with a sense of the hopelessness of further concealment, turned round, threw himself with a cry of terror and despair at M. de Veron's feet, and poured forth a wild, sobbing, scarcely intelligible confession of the fault or crime of which he had been guilty, through the solicitations of M. Eugene, who had, he averred, received every farthing of the amount in which he, Edouard le Blanc, acknowledged himself to be a defaulter. 'Yes!--yes!' exclaimed the son; 'Edouard gave the money into my hands, and if there is any blame, it is mine alone.' M. de Veron listened with a stolid, stony apathy to all this, save for a slight glimmer of triumph that, spite of himself, shone out at the corners of his half-closed eyes. When the young man had ceased sobbing and exclaiming, he said: 'You admit, Edouard le Blanc, that you have robbed me of nearly two thousand francs, at, you say, the solicitation of my son--an excuse, you must be aware, of not the slightest legal weight; no more than if your pretty sister, Mademoiselle Adeline, who, I must be permitted to observe, is not altogether, I suspect, a stranger to this affair----Hear me out, Messieurs, if you please: I say your excuse has no more legal validity, than if your sister had counselled you to commit this felony. Now, mark me, young man: it is just upon five o'clock. At half-past seven precisely, I shall go before a magistrate, and cause a warrant to be issued for your apprehension. To-morrow morning, consequently, the brother of Mademoiselle le Blanc will either be an incarcerated felon, or, which will suit me just as well, a proclaimed fugitive from justice.' 'One moment--one word, for the love of Heaven, before you go!' exclaimed Eugene. 'Is there any mode, any means whereby Edouard may be rescued from this frightful, this unmerited calamity--this irretrievable ruin?'