While Boston Frank had trouble to quiet the madly plunging, frightened horse, Slippery dove into the store to emerge again an instant later choking, sneezing and almost blinded just as if he had dynamited a box loaded with powdered red pepper instead of a common fireproof safe.

It was plainly furnished, there were bars across the window, and three immense safes let into the wall.

Thus it came to pass that on a certain night in August, about two in the morning, Paul Coquenil found himself alone in the baron's spacious, silent library before a massive safe.

The father in his banknotes lashed to a ponderous safe was an easy personification of the slavery of wealth, and the pantomime ducks and drakes were simple to understand as symbolizing the career of a spendthrift (though the father was never that); but why, you asked, did the double-faced nurse exhaust all her spare moments and our patience pirouetting about the stage?