"The rajah received me with every demonstration of pleasure, and hardly left me for a moment during the first day of my visit. At night, however, when I was alone, I sent for Haribadada, and after several misleading questions I said to him:
"'Do you know what has become of little Châli, whom the rajah gave me?'
"He immediately assumed a sad and troubled look, and said, in evident embarrassment:
"'What--Châli? What has become of her? Where is she?'
"'I mean to say that she came to a bad end.'
"'Yes. She committed a very dreadful action.'
"I was very much distressed. I felt my heart beat; my breast was oppressed with grief, and I insisted on knowing what she had done and what had happened to her.
"The man became more and more embarrassed, and murmured: 'You had better not ask about it.'
"'The day you left she stole that little box which the prince had given you; it was found in her hands.'
"The Hindoo looked at me with stupefaction, and then replied: 'Well, she declared with the most sacred oaths that you had given it to her, but nobody could believe that you could have given a king's present to a slave, and so the rajah had her punished.'
"'How was she punished? What was done to her?'
"'She was tied up in a sack and thrown into the lake from this window, from the window of the room in which we are, where she had committed the theft.'
"I felt the most terrible grief that I ever experienced, and made a sign to Haribadad to go away so that he might not see my tears. I spent the night on the gallery which looked on to the lake, on the gallery where I had so often held the poor child on my knees, and pictured to myself her pretty little body lying decomposed in a sack in the dark waters beneath me.
"The next day I left again, in spite of the rajah's entreaties and evident vexation; and I now still feel as if I had never loved any woman but Châli."
Although it was not yet ten o'clock, the employees were pouring in like waves through the great doorway of the Ministry of Marine, having come in haste from every corner of Paris, for the first of the year was approaching, the time for renewed zeal--and for promotions. A noise of hurrying footsteps filled the vast building, which was as tortuous as a labyrinth, and honeycombed with inextricable passages, pierced by innumerable doors opening into the various offices.