‘10. When Antoine was already grown up, shortly before his marriage, his father, Louis, suffered heavy losses of money through a defaulting cashier. Antoine did not take this to heart; moreover, no one ever knew of the incident, which was carefully kept from the knowledge of every one outside of the family.
‘11. He wrote under a pseudonym. He wrote a few insignificant plays in 1876 or 1877; but it would be almost impossible to recover traces of them to-day.
‘12. The house where he was born, and where he lived up to the time of his marriage, is very old (situated on the Quai de H., and not in the Faubourg Montmartre); the furniture is ancient; the house is quite unlike a modern one.
‘13. The description of Lucie, his wife, is exact—“a very charming woman with beautiful dark hair and eyes.” Antoine had a portrait of her in a locket, which he used to wear on his person.
‘14. In a conversation I had with him a short time before his death, he spoke to me about the extreme fatigue which he felt, a kind of general lassitude, and of his great need of change and rest.
‘In all the above facts there is an admirable and most unlikely concordance between the reality and the indications given by Madame X.
‘To be quite complete, I ought to mention the facts which I have not been able to verify, and those which seem inexact to me.
‘Among the facts I have been unable to verify, are the names of Yvonne, Josephine, Sarah, Marguerite, Georges, Clotilde.
‘The chief inexact details are the story of Lucie’s true husband—a Jew (un gros juif)—and of the child Lucie and Antoine had, of whose existence hardly any one knew; also the detail of having been wounded during the Commune and his wound having been dressed by my father. I ought also to add that Antoine and Marie B. were at Fontainebleau with their three children. However, for reasons which I will develop further on, these errors have a great interest and merit an attentive examination.