"The wedding had no more existence than the Princess," returned Madame la Propriétaire, believing herself more and more.
"Then she will have cheated me out of the grey wig from the first," cried Madame Dépine, involuntarily. "And I who sacrificed myself to her!"
"Comment! It was your wig?"
"No, no." She flushed and stammered. "But enfin—and then, oh, heaven! my brooch!"
"She has stolen your brooch?"
Great tears rolled down the wrinkled, ashen cheeks. So this was her reward for secretly instructing the coiffeur to make the "Princess's" wig first. The Princess, indeed! Ah, the adventuress! She felt choking; she shook her fist in the air. Not even the brooch to show when her family came up from Tonnerre, to say nothing of the wig. Was there a God in the world at all? Oh, holy Mother! No wonder the trickstress would not be escorted to the station—she never went to the station. No wonder she would not sell the royal secrets to the journalist—there were none to sell. Oh! it was all of a piece.
"If I were you I should go to the bureau of police!" said Madame la Propriétaire.
Yes, she would go; the wretch should be captured, should be haled to gaol. Even her half of the Louis Quinze timepiece recurred to poor Madame Dépine's brain.
"Add that she has stolen my carpet-bag."
The local bureau telegraphed first to Tonnerre.