ARTHUR.T Stories ------500 Million Dollars --II---Page 13

But, unfortunately for the prisoner, the seals upon the papers turned

out to be the legitimate arms of Spain and not those of Don Carlos, and as a finale he ingenuously identified the seal of the Mayor of Madrid as that of his "Royal King."

Next came a selection of letters of nobility, sealed and signed in the

name of Pope Leo the Thirteenth. These, he asserted, must have been placed there by his enemies. "I am a soldier and a general of honor, and I never did any such trafficking," he cried grandly, when charged with selling bogus patents of nobility.

He explained some of his correspondence with the Lapierres and his

famous bill for twelve thousand dollars by saying that when he found out
that the inheritance Tessier did not exist he had conceived the idea of
making a novel of the story--a "fantastic history"--to be published "in
four languages simultaneously," and asserted solemnly that he had
intended printing the whole sixteen feet of bill as part of the romance.

Then, to the undisguised horror of the unfortunate General, at a summons
from the prosecutor an elderly French woman arose in the audience and
came to the bar. The General turned first pale, then purple. He hotly
denied that he had married this lady in France twenty-three years ago.

"Name of a name! He had known her! Yes--certainly! But she was no wife
of his--she had been only his servant. The other lady--the
Hibernian--was his only wife." But the chickens had begun to come home
to roost. The pointed mustaches drooped with an unmistakable look of
dejection, and as he marched back to his seat his shoulders no longer
had the air of military distinction that one would expect in a general
of a "Royal King." His head sank on his chest as his deserted wife took
the stand against him--the wife whom, he had imagined, he would never
see again.

Any one could have seen that Elizabeth de Moreno was a good woman. Her
father's name, she said, was Nichaud, and she had first met the prisoner
twenty-three years ago in the village of Dalk, in the Department of the
Tarne, where, in 1883, he had been convicted and sentenced for stealing
bed linen from the Hotel Kassam. She had remained faithful to him in
spite of his disgrace, and had visited him daily in prison, bringing him
milk and tobacco. On his liberation she had married him and they had
gone to live in Bordeaux. For years they had lived in comfort, and she
had borne him eight children. He had never been to any war and was
neither a general nor, so far as she had known, a friend of Don Carlos.
She had supposed that her husband held some position in connection with
the inspection of railroads, but, in 1902, it had come out that he was
in the business of selling counterfeit railroad tickets, and had
employed a printer named Paul Casignol to print great numbers of

third-class tickets for the purpose of selling them to ignorant soldiers

and artisans. Moreno had fled to America. She had then discovered that he had also made a practice of checking worthless baggage, _stealing it himself_ and then presenting claims therefor against the railroad
companies. She had been left without a sou, and the rascal had taken everything she had away with him, including even the locket containing the hair of her children. By the time she had finished her story
Moreno's courage had deserted him, the jury without hesitation returned a verdict of guilty, and the judge then and there sentenced the prisoner to a term at hard labor in State's prison.

*         *         *         *         *

"_Mais oui_," grunts Lapierre, as the crow, with a final caw of

contempt, alights in a poplar farther down the road, "I don't blame the
bird for laughing at me. But, after all, there is nothing to be ashamed
of. Is one to be blamed that one is fooled? _Hein_! We are all made
fools of once and again, and, as I said before, he would have deceived
the devil himself. But perhaps things are better as they are. Money is
the root of all evil. If I had an automobile I should probably be thrown
out and have my neck broken. But if M'sieu' intends to take the next
train for Bordeaux it is as well that he should be starting."