Alluts, it was re-sold to a Turkish dealer for one hundred and two thousand francs. This led to the murder of the jeweler, and the total ruin of the Allut family, who had to fly, and who remained in Greece in a state of poverty.
A lady presented herself at the Café Loupian and asked for the proprietor. She told him that her family was indebted for eminent services to a poor man, ruined by the events of 1814, but so disinterested that he would take no reward. He was anxious, however, to enter as a waiter in some establishment where he would be treated well. He was not young, he looked about fifty; but to influence M. Loupian to engage him, she would pay him a hundred francs a mouth, unknown to the applicant.
Loupian accepted the terms. A man came, badly dressed and not good-looking. Madame Loupian examined him attentively, and thought she saw some likeness to some old acquaintance, but could not recall anything satisfactory, and forgot the matter. Two men from Nîmes used to come regularly to the café. One day, one of them did not appear. A few jokes were made about his absence. The next day, too, passed without his appearing. Guilhem Solari undertook to discover the reason; he returned to the café about nine o'clock, and in great consternation related that on the day before, about five in the morning, the body of the unfortunate Chaubard had been found, stabbed with a dagger, on the Pont des Arts. The weapon was left in the wound, and the handle was inscribed, in printed letters, Number One.
All kinds of conjectures were made. The police moved heaven and earth, but the criminal escaped all their investigations. Some time afterward a sporting dog belonging to the landlord was poisoned, and a boy declared that he had seen a client give the poor brute some biscuits. The boy gave a description of the client.
He was set down as an enemy of Loupian, who out of spite used to come to the café, where Loupian was, so to say, at his orders. An action was brought against the malicious client, but he proved his innocence by establishing an alibi. He was a courier on the mail-coach, and on the day of the crime arrived at Strasbourg. Two weeks after this, Madame Loupian's favorite parrot met the same fate as the dog, and was poisoned with bitter almonds and parsley. New investigations were made, but without any result.
Loupian had a daughter of sixteen years of age by his first maiTiair: she was beautiful as an angel. A swell saw her, became crazy about her, and spent immense sums in buying over to his interest the people of the café and the girl's maid; he thus had numerous interviews with her, and seduced her, under the pretense that he was a marquis and a
