“Lucien Chardon, son of an apothecary at Angouleme—­his mother a Demoiselle de Rubempre—­bears the name of Rubempre in virtue of a royal patent.  This was granted by the request of Madame la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Monsieur le Comte de Serizy.

  “This young man came to Paris in 182 . . . without any means of
  subsistence, following Madame la Comtesse Sixte du Chatelet, then
  Madame de Bargeton, a cousin of Madame d’Espard’s.

“He was ungrateful to Madame de Bargeton, and cohabited with a girl named Coralie, an actress at the Gymnase, now dead, who left Monsieur Camusot, a silk mercer in the Rue des Bourdonnais, to live with Rubempre.

“Ere long, having sunk into poverty through the insufficiency of the money allowed him by this actress, he seriously compromised his brother-in-law, a highly respected printer of Angouleme, by giving forged bills, for which David Sechard was arrested, during a short visit paid to Angouleme by Lucien.  In consequence of this affair Rubempre fled, but suddenly reappeared in Paris with the Abbe Carlos Herrera.

“Though having no visible means of subsistence, the said Lucien de Rubempre spent on an average three hundred thousand francs during the three years of his second residence in Paris, and can only have obtained the money from the self-styled Abbe Carlos Herrera —­but how did he come by it?

“He has recently laid out above a million francs in repurchasing the Rubempre estates to fulfil the conditions on which he was to be allowed to marry Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu.  This marriage has been broken off in consequence of inquiries made by the Grandlieu family, the said Lucien having told them that he had obtained the money from his brother-in-law and his sister; but the information obtained, more especially by Monsieur Derville, attorney-at-law, proves that not only were that worthy couple ignorant of his having made this purchase, but that they believed the said Lucien to be deeply in debt.

  “Moreover, the property inherited by the Sechards consists of
  houses; and the ready money, by their affidavit, amounted to about
  two hundred thousand francs.

“Lucien was secretly cohabiting with Esther Gobseck; hence there can be no doubt that all the lavish gifts of the Baron de Nucingen, the girl’s protector, were handed over to the said Lucien.

“Lucien and his companion, the convict, have succeeded in keeping their footing in the face of the world longer than Coignard did, deriving their income from the prostitution of the said Esther, formerly on the register of the town.”

Though these notes are to a great extent a repetition of the story already told, it was necessary to reproduce them to show the part played by the police in Paris.  As has already been seen from the note on Peyrade, the police has summaries, almost invariably correct,