I have said that our genteel felon was not only refined in manners but shy towards his new companions; nor, for several weeks, could all our efforts rub off his reserve. I was not surprised that he kept aloof from the coarser inmates, but I was not prepared to find that all my own advances to confidence and companionship, were repulsed with even more decision than those of my officers. At last, some passing event disclosed my true character to him, when I learned for the first time that he had mistaken me for a government spy; inasmuch as he could not otherwise account for my intimacy with Madame Sorret and her spouse.

Our first move towards confidence was owing to the following circumstance. I had been engaged one forenoon in writing a letter to my mother, when Madame Sorret sent for me to see the Sisters of Charity, who were making their rounds with a few comforts for the convicts. I made my toilette and repaired to the parlor, where the charitable women, who heard many kind things of me from the landlady, bestowed a liberal donation of books. Returning quickly to my letter, which I had left open on the table, confident that no one in the room read Italian, I again took up my pen to finish a paragraph. But, as I observed the page, it seemed that I had not written so much, yet the sheet was nearly full of words, and all in my handwriting. I reperused the document and found several lines, which, though in perfect keeping with the sense and context of the composition, were certainly not in my natural style. I was sure I had not used the complimentary language, to which I am always so averse. Still I read the page again—again—and again! I got up; walked about the room; took the paper to the window; put it down; walked about again, and then reperused the letter. For my life, I could not detect the precise difficulty that puzzled me. The paper was, perhaps, bewitched! It was mine, and yet it was not! In my dilemma, I rolled out a round Spanish carramba or two; and, with an Ave Maria of utter bewilderment, begun to put up my writing materials.

My companions, who had been huddled in a corner, watching my actions, could stand it no longer, but bursting into peals of hearty laughter, announced that Monsieur Germaine had taken the liberty to add a postscript, while I was deep in literature with the Sisters of Charity!

The ice was broken! Monsieur Germaine was not yet convicted, so we gave him the benefit of the British law, and resolving to “consider the fellow innocent till proved to be guilty,” we raised him to the dignity of companionship. His education was far superior to mine, and his conversational powers were wonderful. He seemed perfectly familiar with Latin and Greek, and had a commanding knowledge of history, theology, mathematics, and astronomy. I never met his equal in penmanship, drawing, and designing.

A few days of sociability sufficed to win a mutual confidence, and to demand the mutual stories of our lives.

Germaine was born so high up on those picturesque borders of Piedmont, that it was difficult to say whether the Swiss or Italian predominated in his blood. The troubles and wars of the region impoverished his parents, who had been gentlefolks in better times; yet they managed to bestow the culture that made him the accomplished person I have described. No opportunity offered, however, for his advancement as he reached maturity, and it was thought best that he should go abroad in search of fortune. For a while the quiet and modest youth was successful in the humbler employments to which he stooped for bread; but his address and talents, and especially his skill in designing and penmanship, attracted the notice of a sharper, with whom he accidentally became intimate; so that, before he knew it, the adroit scrivener was both used and compromised by the knave. In truth, I do not suppose that Germaine’s will was made of stern and tough materials. Those soft and gentle beings are generally disposed to grasp the pleasures of life without labor; and whenever a relaxed conscience has once allowed its possessor to tamper with crime, its success is not only a stimulant but a motive for farther enterprise. Germaine was soon a successful forger. He amassed twenty or thirty thousand francs by practices so perfect in their execution, that he never dreamed of detection. But, at last, a daring speculation made him our companion in the tower.

Three days before his introduction to the chateau of Brest, and a few hours before the regular departure of the Paris mail, Germaine called on an exchange broker with seventeen thousand francs in gold, with which he purchased a sight draft on the capital. Soon after he called a second time on the broker, and exhibiting a letter of orders, bearing a regular post-mark, from his principals, who were alleged to be oil merchants at Marseilles, desired to countermand the transaction, and receive back his gold for the bill of exchange which he tendered. The principal partner of the brokers did not happen to be within at the moment, and the junior declined complying till his return. En attendant, Monsieur Germaine sallied forth, and offered a neighboring broker an additional half per cent, on the current value of gold for the cash. He expressed, as the cause of this sacrifice, extreme anxiety to depart by the four o’clock diligence, but the urgency aroused the broker’s suspicion, and led him to request Germaine’s return in half an hour, which he required to collect the specie.

The incautious forger went off to his hotel with the promise in his ear, while the wary broker dropped in on the drawers of the draft to compare notes. The result of the interview was a visit to the bureau de police, whence a couple of officers were despatched to Germaine’s hotel. They entered the dandy’s room in disguise, but they were not quick enough to save from destruction several proof impressions of blank drafts, which the counterfeiter cast into the fire the moment he heard a knock at his door. In his trunks, they found engraving tools, a small press, various acids and a variety of inks; all of which were duly noted and preserved, while Monsieur Germaine was committed to the chateau.

In those days there were no electric wires, and as the weather became thick and cloudy, the old-fashioned semaphore or telegraph was useless in giving notice to the Parisian police to stop the payment of a suspected draft, and arrest the forger’s accomplice in the capital.

Soon after the mail of that day from Brest reached the metropolis, a lady of most respectable appearance, clad in mourning, presented herself at the counter of the broker’s Parisian correspondent, and exhibiting an unquestionable draft, drew seventeen thousand francs. From the rapidity with which the whole of this adroit scheme was accomplished in Brest and Paris, it seems that Germaine required but four hours to copy, engrave, print and fill up the forged bill; and yet, so perfectly did he succeed, that when the discharged draft came back to Brest, neither drawers, brokers, nor police could distinguish between the true one and the false! No one had seen Germaine at work, or could prove complicity with the lady. The mourning dame was nowhere to be found in Paris, Brest or Marseilles; so that when I finally quitted the chateau, the adroit chevalier was still an inmate, but detained only on suspicion!