“Which means that you knew that the presence of a woman at your house would tell very much against you, and that justice would not excuse this scandalous defiance of public morality. A man who respects himself so little as to associate with a worthless woman, does not elevate her to his standard, but he descends to her base level.”
“Monsieur!”
“I suppose you know who the woman is, whom you permit to bear the honest name borne by your mother?”
“Mme. Gypsy was a governess when I first knew her. She was born at Oporto, and came to France with a Portuguese family.”
“Her name is not Gypsy; she has never been a governess, and she is not a Portuguese.”
Prosper began to protest against this statement; but M. Patrigent shrugged his shoulders, and began looking over a large file of papers on his desk.
“Ah, here it is,” he said, “listen: Palmyre Chocareille, born at Paris in 1840, daughter of James Chocareille, undertaker’s assistant, and of Caroline Piedlent, his wife.”
Prosper looked vexed and impatient; he did not know that the judge was reading him this report to convince him that nothing can escape the police.
“Palmyre Chocareille,” he continued, “at twelve years of age was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and remained with him until she was sixteen. Traces of her for one year are lost. At the age of seventeen she is hired as a servant by a grocer on the Rue St. Denis, named Dombas, and remains there three months. She lives out during this same year, 1857, at eight different places. In 1858 she entered the store of a fan-merchant in Choiseul Alley.”
As he read, the judge watched Prosper’s face to observe the effect of these revelations.