"What did he do? Why, it's the simplest thing in the world. He came to an understanding with certain people from whom your father had borrowed money, in such wise as to secure a percentage of their profits. I am expecting Altona this very morning. If he should happen to come while you are here, you would see a superb specimen of the usurer of to-day. He is the dealer in curiosities, who sells you a portrait by Velasquez, a Boule cabinet, a bust by Houdon, for a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand francs, and buys them back for fifty or sixty thousand. The amusing feature of it is that the Velasquez and the Boule and the Houdon are genuine, and that the customer wouldn't do a bad bit of business by keeping them. This enables Master Altona to pass himself off as a collector, a dilettante, a connoisseur of art!--This fellow and his gang learned of Monsieur le Marquis de Claviers' financial embarrassment. I am somewhat to blame. I recommended your father to apply to a certain Gruet, whom I thought trustworthy, and he was of the same stripe as they! They knew also what the treasures of Grandchamp were worth. You see the scheme; it's familiar enough: to force the marquis to a sale by getting all his debts in one hand. Chaffin was to have his commission--thirty or forty thousand francs, perhaps more. He undertook to offer Monsieur de Claviers four millions, in Altona's name, for a list catalogued in the notes to your family history! He had the audacity to do that! And Monsieur le Marquis is so kind-hearted that he explained it to me: 'He thought he was doing me a service,' he said.--Luckily we were able to enlighten him by discovering the traces of a most commonplace rascality: bills settled twice, if you please--once to the tradesman, and once, to whom?--to Master Chaffin.--Monsieur de Claviers cut off his head. When I wrote you that he was severe, Cauvet, the advocate I got for you, had found only one of these bills. I said to myself that there was a chance for a mistake. For all a man's a notary, he has difficulty in believing in certain comedies, and this Chaffin played one for me when I questioned him, with your letter in my hand. To dismiss him so summarily was to run the risk of never getting to the bottom of many things. However, we're beginning to see daylight. As I always say to my cousin Jacques Molan, the dramatic author, the true modern comedy is played in our own homes." "Then," queried Landri, as Métivier complacently mentioned his cousinship to an illustrious writer, of whom he was proud after having been very much ashamed of him, "then you think that Chaffin was interested in the Altona deal?"