Suddenly he brought his fist down upon the table in a rage: "When I think that, if I had chosen, I might have entered Mora's service instead of Monpavon's, that I might have had Louis's place! There was a lucky dog! Think of the rolls of a thousand he nabbed at his duke's death!--And the clothes the duke left, shirts by the hundred, a dressing-gown in blue fox-skin worth more than twenty thousand francs! And there's that Noel, he must have lined his pockets! Simply by making haste, _parbleu!_ for he knew it couldn't last long. And there's nothing to be picked up on Place Vendome now. An old gendarme of a mother who manages everything. They're selling Saint-Romans, they're selling the pictures. Half of the house is to let. It's the end of everything." I confess that I could not help showing my satisfaction; for, after all, that wretched Jansoulet is the cause of all our misfortunes. A man who boasted of being so rich and talked about it everywhere. The public was taken in by it, like the fish that sees scales shining in a net. He has lost millions, I grant you; but why did he let people think he had plenty more? They have arrested Bois-l'Hery, but he's the one they should have arrested.--Ah! if we had had another expert, I am sure it would have been done long ago.--Indeed, as I said to Francis, one has only to look at that parvenu of a Jansoulet to see what he amounts to. Such a face, like a high and mighty brigand! "And so common," added the former valet. "Not the slightest moral character." "Utter lack of breeding.--However, he's under water, and Jenkins too, and many others with them." "What! the doctor too? That's too bad. Such a polite, pleasant man!" "Yes, there's another man that's being sold out. Horses, carriages, furniture. The courtyard at his house is full of placards and sounds empty as if death had passed that way. The chateau at Nanterre's for sale. There were half a dozen 'little Bethlehems' left, and they packed them off in a cab. It's the crash, I tell you, Pere Passajon, a crash that we may not see the end of, perhaps, because we're both old, but it will be complete. Everything's rotten; everything must burst!" It was horrible to see that old flunkey of the Empire, gaunt and stooping, covered with filth and crying like Jeremiah: "This is the end," with his toothless mouth wide open like a great black hole. I was afraid and ashamed before him, I longed to see his back; and I thought to myself: "O Monsieur Chalmette! O my little vineyard at Montbars!" Same date.