Excerpt........It’s a very short time ago, yesterday as it were, that one Sunday afternoon about four o’clock, the whole Quartier du Marais was in an uproar. Rumor asserted that one of the most respectable merchants in the Hue Boi-de-Sicile ha ... Read more

Excerpt........It’s a very short time ago, yesterday as it were, that one Sunday afternoon about four o’clock, the whole Quartier du Marais was in an uproar. Rumor asserted that one of the most respectable merchants in the Hue Boi-de-Sicile had disappeared, and all efforts to find him continued fruitless. The strange event was discussed in all the shops in the neighborhood; there were groups at the doors of all the fruit-sellers, every moment some terrified housewife arrived, bringing fresh particulars. The grocer on the corner had the best and latest news, the most reliable, too, for he received his information from the lips of the cook who lived in the house. “So,” said he, “yesterday evening, after dinner, our neighbor, Monsieur Jandidier, went down to his cellar to get a bottle of wine, and was never seen again. He disappeared, vanished, evaporated!” It occasionally happens that mysterious disappearances are mentioned. The public becomes excited, and prudent people buy sword-canes. Policemen hear absurd reports, and shrug their shoulders. They know the wrong side of the carefully embroidered canvas. They investigate, and find, instead of artless falsehoods, the truth; instead of romances, sorrowful stories. Yet, up to a certain point, the grocer of the Rue Saint Louis told the truth. M. Jandidier, manufacturer of imitation jewelry, had not been at home for the last twenty-four hours. M. Theodore Jandidier was a man fifty-eight years old, very stout and very bald, who had made a large fortune in business. He was supposed to have a considerable income from stocks and bonds, and his business brought him annually, on an average, fifty thousand francs. He was beloved and respected in his neighborhood, and justly so; his honesty was above suspicion, his morality rigid. Married late in life to a penniless relative, he had made her perfectly happy. He had an only daughter, a pretty, graceful girl, named Thérèse, whom he worshiped. She had been engaged to the eldest son of Schmidt the banker—member of the firm Schmidt, Gubenheim & Worb—M. Gustave; but the match was broken off, nobody knew why, for the young people were desperately in love with each other. It was said by Jandidier’s acquaintances that Schmidt senior, a perfect skinflint, had demanded a dowry far beyond the merchant’s means. Less