My Library

landlord, had come there two days previously for the purpose of engaging a sumptuous dinner for two persons, that being the landlord’s business—a caterer. For the dinner he had paid a round price in advance, and had given the proprietor a small silver coin of peculiar workmanship as a memorial of his visit. This coin or medal the man produced, and, lo! it was a perfect fac-simile, on a larger scale, of the jewel I had that very day examined in the scarf of Ravalette at Belleville. To my question as to when he last saw my mysterious friend, the patron answered: ‘I do not know him, where he is, when I next shall see him—nothing whatever. He left with you, and has not since returned. He is evidently a mysterious man; and were it not that I have this little medal to commemorate his visit, together with three hundred and ten francs in gold in my pocket, which he paid me for the wines and dinner, I should more than half believe that he was the Devil himself out for a lark in Paris. But the Devil never pays in gold, so those say who ought to know, and I am sure Ravalette paid me in bran new coin, which, on account of its beauty and full weight, I just tied up in one end of my long leather purse, meaning to give it to my daughter, at school in Dijon, for a birth-day gift. Here’s the money, as you perceive, nicely tied up, and sealed with wax, just as I fixed it an hour or two after Ravalette paid me.’ “With these words the honest landlord drew