"Some time after this happened the affair of the diamond. My father, almost desperate, knew not what to do. I related his trouble to Mrs. Seraphin; she answered, 'M. Ferrand is so charitable that perhaps he will do something for your father.' The same evening I waited on table; M. Ferrand said to me, bluntly, 'Your father has need of thirteen hundred francs; go this night and tell him to come to my office to-morrow; he shall have the money. He is an honest man, and deserves that one should interest himself for him.' At this act of kindness I burst into tears; I did not know how to thank my master. He said to me, in his ordinary rough manner, 'It is well, it is well; what I have done is very simple." In the evening I came to tell the good news to my father, and the next day----" "I had the money, against a bill at three months' date, accepted in blank by me," said Morel. "I did like Louise; I wept with gratitude: I called him my benefactor. Oh! he must needs have been wicked indeed to destroy the gratitude and veneration I vowed to him." "This precaution to make you sign a bill in blank, at such a date that you could not pay it, did not awaken your suspicions?" asked Rudolph. [Illustration: THE ARRIVAL OF THE SOLDIERS] "No, sir, I thought that the notary only took it for security; besides, he told me I need not think of paying it under two years; every three months it should be renewed for the sake of being regular; yet, at the end of the first term, it was presented, and not being paid, he obtained a judgment against me under another name; but he told me not to be troubled, that it was an error of his clerk." "He wished thus to have you in his power," said Rudolph. "Alas! yes, sir; for it was from the date of his judgment he began to--but continue, Louise, continue: I do not know where I am. My head turns. I shall become mad; it is too much--too much!" Rudolph soothed him, and Louise continued: "I redoubled my zeal to show my gratitude. The housekeeper then held me in great aversion; she often placed me in the wrong by not repeating the orders that M. Ferrand gave her for me; I suffered from this, and would have preferred another place, but the obligation of my father to my master prevented my leaving. It was now three months since he had lent the money; he continued to scold me before Mrs. Seraphin, yet he looked at me sometimes behind her back in such a manner as to embarrass me, and he smiled in seeing me blush." "You comprehend, sir, he was then about to obtain a judgment against me."