“No more would I,” said he, “but if she had accepted my hundred louis it would have been different. I am curious to know the further history of this siren, and I rely upon you to tell me all about it as you go through Genoa.”
He went away at day-break next morning.
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.”