I
couldn't see your employer's face, my son; but I heard his voice,
and it didn't please me. It isn't the voice of an honest,
straightforward man. Take care, Toto, and don't allow yourself to
be cajoled--be prudent."
However, it was quite unnecessary to recommend prudence to Victor
Chupin. He had promised his assistance, but not without a mental
reservation. "No need to see danger till it comes," he had said
to himself. "If the thing proves to be of questionable propriety
after all, then good-evening; I desert."
It remains to know what he meant by questionable propriety; the
meaning of the expression is rather vague. He had returned in all
honesty and sincerity of purpose to an honest life, and nothing in
the world would have induced him, avaricious though he was, to
commit an act that was positively wrong. Only the line that
separates good from evil was not very clearly defined in his mind.
This was due in a great measure to his education, and to the fact
that it had been long before he realized that police regulations
do not constitute the highest moral law. It was due also to
chance, and, since he had no decided calling, to the necessity of
depending for a livelihood upon the many strange professions which
impecunious and untrained individuals, both of the higher and
lower classes, adopt in Paris.
However, on the following morning he arrayed himself in his best
apparel, and at exactly half-past eleven o'clock he rang at his
employer's door.
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