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Updated: June 4, 2025
I looked up, puzzled, at my fair client. "My darling Carissimo, my dear M. Ratichon," she said in reply to my mute query. "Carissimo?" I stammered, yet further intrigued. "My darling pet, a valuable creature, the companion of my lonely hours," she rejoined, once more bursting into tears. "If I lose him, my heart will inevitably break." I understood at last. "Madame has lost her dog?" I asked.
He also carried a malacca cane, which he deposited upon my desk, and a gold-rimmed spy-glass which, with a gesture of supreme affectation, he raised to his eye. "Now, M. Hector Ratichon," he said abruptly, "perhaps you will be good enough to explain." I had risen when he entered. But now I sat down again and coolly pointed to the best chair in the room.
I sit and dream now beneath the shade of a vine-clad arbour of those glorious days of long ago, when kings and emperors placed the destiny of their inheritance in my hands, when autocrats and dictators came to me for assistance and advice, and the name of Hector Ratichon stood for everything that was most astute and most discreet. And if at times a gentle sigh of regret escapes my lips, Mme.
I assure you, Sir, that a feather would have knocked me down. The coarse insult, the wanton injustice, had deprived me of the use of my limbs and of my speech. Then the juge d'instruction proceeded dryly: "Now then, Ratichon, you have heard what M. Mauruss Mosenstein has been good enough to say to you. He did it with my approval and consent.
"If I give in to those thieves to-day and pay them five thousand francs, they would only set to work to steal Carissimo again and demand ten thousand francs from me another time." I was silent. What could I say? Her argument was indeed unanswerable. "No, my good M. Ratichon," she said very determinedly after a while. "I have quite decided that you must confound those thieves.
Until three months ago I was poor and had to earn my living by working in a milliner's shop in the Rue St. Honoré. The concierge in the house where I used to lodge is my only friend, but she cannot help me for reasons which will presently be made clear to you. She told me, however, that she had a nephew named Theodore, who was clerk to M. Ratichon, advocate and confidential agent.
Carissimo is all the world to me, and this is not the first time, nor yet the second, that he has been stolen from me. Three times, my good M. Ratichon, three times has he been stolen, and three times have I received such peremptory demands for money for his safe return; and every time the demand has been more and more exorbitant.
Ah, yes! And the garden? . . . After déjeuner you must see my prize chickens. Theodore will show them to you. You did not know Theodore was here? Well, yes! He lives with us. Madame Ratichon finds him useful about the house, and, not being used to luxuries, he is on the whole pleasantly contented. Ah, here comes Madame Ratichon to tell us that the déjeuner is served!
A moment ago I had been in the depths of despair, and now now a whole vista of beatitude opened out before me! What the worthy Israelite said was that, by the terms of Grandpapa Goldberg's will, if Leah married without her father's consent, one-half of the fortune destined for her would revert to her aunt, Sarah Goldberg, now Madame Hector Ratichon.
He was half dead with inanition, and was conveyed speechless and helpless to his home in the Rue de Grammont, there, presumably, to be nursed back to health by Madame his wife. Now in all this matter, I ask you, Sir, who ran the greatest risk? Why, I Hector Ratichon, of course Hector Ratichon, in whose apartment M. de Firmin-Latour was discovered in a position bordering on absolute inanition.
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