A Thousand Francs Reward; and, Military Sketches — Themes and Context

workman. As to his wife, she began to utter piercing shrieks, protesting that both she and her husband were innocent. They were arrested, conveyed to head-quarters, and questioned by the magistrate. Their answers were precisely the same.

They acknowledged having received a visit from their employer Saturday evening. He seemed so ill that they asked him to take something to drink, but he refused. He had come, he said, to give a large order, and proposed that Tarot should undertake it, employing his own workmen. They replied that they had no means to do so, whereupon their employer answered: “No matter, I’ll supply the money.” And laid twelve hundred-franc bills on the table.

At eleven o’clock M. Jandidier asked his workman to accompany him; he was going to the Faubourg Saint Antoine. Tarot went as far as the Place de la Bastile, crossing the foot-bridge of Constantine, and walking along the canal.

The magistrate asked both husband and wife the very natural question:

“Why did you hide the money?”

They made the same reply.

Monday morning, hearing of M. Jandidier’s disappearance, they were seized with terror. Tarot said to his wife: “If it is known that our employer came here, that I crossed the bridge and followed the edge of the canal with him, I shall be seriously compromised. If this money were found in our possession we should be lost.”

The wife then wanted to burn the notes, but Tarot opposed the plan, intending to return them to the family.

This explanation was reasonable and plausible, if not probable, but it was merely an explanation. Tarot and his wife were kept under arrest.

A week after, the magistrate was still greatly perplexed. Three more examinations had not enabled him to come to any fixed conclusion.

Were Tarot and his wife innocent? Were they simply marvelously clever in maintaining a probable story?

The magistrate knew not what to think, when one morning a strange rumor spread abroad. The Maison Jandidier had failed. A detective sent to make inquiries, brought back the most startling news. M. Jandidier, who people supposed to be so rich, was ruined, utterly ruined, and for three years had kept up his credit by all sorts of expedients. There was not a thousand francs in his house, and his notes due at the end of the month amounted to sixty-seven thousand, five hundred francs.

The cautious merchant gambled in stocks at the Bourse, the virtuous husband was unfaithful.

The magistrate had just heard these particulars, when Maitre Magloire appeared, pale and panting for breath.

“You know, monsieur?” he exclaimed on the threshold. “All!”

“I think so; and yet, that visit--how do you explain that visit?”

Magloire shook his head mournfully.

“I’m a fool,” said he, “and Lecoq has just proved it. Monsieur Jandidier talked about life insurance policies at the Café Ture. That was the key to the whole matter. Jandidier was insured for 200,000 francs, and the companies, in France, never pay in case of suicide; do you understand?”

Thanks to M. Gustave Schmidt, who will marry Mlle. Thérèse Jandidier next month, the Maison Jandidier did not fail.

Tarot and his wife, on being restored to liberty, were set up in business by the same M. Gustave, and no longer go junketing on Mondays.

But what has become of M. Jandidier? A thousand francs reward for news of him!

She may be young or old, dazzlingly pretty or frightfully ugly; in this case looks make no difference, she is ever and always the same. If there is much that is evil in her composition there is quite as much that is good. She is a woman although--or because--she is a cantinière. This much is certain--she loves the soldier, and is ever ready to do him a service.

It is unnecessary to describe the cantinière in her glory; that is to say, at the head of her regiment on review days, arrayed in fall uniform, her glazed cap perched jauntily over one ear and her little cask on her back. Every one knows her traditional jacket, coquettish short skirt, trousers with scarlet stripes, and her fantastic boots.

It is certainly a pretty sight to see her when the drum beats, leading the way, and keeping time to the step of the soldiers.

But the drum is not always beating, fortunately! glory and noise do not suffice to fill the stomach, so on her return to the quarters, the cantinière lays aside her gorgeous apparel, and resumes her civilian costume, that is, a skirt and drees, and bestows her attention upon the thousand details connected with her establishment.