Singly and in packages the collateral made its exit. A half-dozen regal
chemises made to order at fifty francs apiece; a musical clock picked up
at Genoa for twelve louis; a patent boot-jack and an ebony billiard cue;
a Paduan violin; two statuettes of more fidelity than modesty, to be
sold pound for pound at the current value of bronze; divers
pipes--articles of which Mr. Simp had earned the title of connoisseur,
by investing several hundred dollars annually--a gutta-percha
self-adjusting dog-muzzle, the dog attached to which had been seized by
H. M. Napoleon III. in lieu of taxes, etc., etc.
Everything passed out successfully except one pair of pantaloons which
protruded from Freckle's vest, and that unfortunate person at once fell
under suspicion of theft. All went in the manner stated to Mr. Lees'
chamber, he being the only colonist who did not hazard the loss of his
room, chiefly because nobody else would rent it, and in part because his
landlady, having swindled him for six or eight years, had compunctions
as to ejecting him.
Thence in the morning, true to his aristocratic instincts, Mr. Simp
departed in a _voiture_ for the central bureau of the Mont de Piete,[B]
in the Rue Blanc Manteau. His face had become familiar there of late.
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