“There is heavy playing at Wilson’s?”
“Sometimes.”
“You are in the habit of visiting places of this sort. Were you not connected in some way with a scandalous adventure which took place at the house of a woman named Crescenzi?”
“I was summoned to testify, having witnessed a theft.”
“Gambling generally leads to stealing. And did you not play baccarat at Wilson’s, and lose eighteen hundred francs?”
“Excuse me, monsieur, only eleven hundred.”
“Very well. In the morning you paid a note of a thousand francs.”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Moreover, there remained in your desk five hundred francs, and you had four hundred in your purse when you were arrested. So that altogether, in twenty-four hours, four thousand five hundred francs—”
Prosper was not discountenanced, but stupefied.