When I got up I received a note from the false Astrodi, asking me if I expected her and her great chum to supper. I had scarcely replied in the affirmative, when the sham Duke of Courland I had left at Grenoble appeared on the scene. He confessed in a humble voice that he was the son of clock-maker at Narva, that his buckles were valueless, and that he had come to beg an alms of me. I gave him four Louis, and he asked me to keep his secret. I replied that if anyone asked me about him that I should say what was absolutely true, that I knew him nothing about him. "Thank you; I am now going to Marseilles." "I hope you will have a prosperous journey." Later on my readers will hear how I found him at Genoa. It is a good thing to know something about people of his kind, of whom there are far too many in the world. I called up the landlord and told him I wanted a delicate supper for three in my own room. He told me that I should have it, and then said, "I have just had a row with the Chevalier Stuard." "What about?" "Because he has nothing to pay me with, and I am going to turn them out immediately, although the lady is in bed in convulsions which are suffocating her." "Take out your bill in her charms." "Ah, I don't care for that sort of thing! I am getting on in life, and I don't want any more scenes to bring discredit on my house." "Go and tell her that from henceforth she and her husband will dine and sup in their own room and that I will pay for them as long as I remain here." "You are very generous, sir, but you know that meals in a private room are charged double." "I know they are." "Very good." I shuddered at the idea of the woman being turned out of doors without any resources but her body, by which she refused to profit. On the other hand I could not condemn the inn-keeper who, like his fellows, was not troubled with much gallantry. I had yielded to an impulse of pity without any hopes of advantage for myself. Such were my thoughts when Stuard came to thank me, begging me to come and see his wife and try and persuade her to behave in a different manner. "She will give me no answers, and you know that that sort of thing is rather tedious." "Come, she knows what you have done for her; she will talk to you, for her feelings . . . ." "What business have you to talk about feelings after what happened yesterday evening?" "It was well for that gentleman that he went away at midnight, otherwise I should have killed him this morning." "My dear sir, allow me to tell you that all that is pure braggadocio. Yesterday, not to-day, was the time to kill him, or to throw your plate at his head, at all events. We will now go and see your wife."