"And now, M'sieu'," said little Madame Reddon, raising her hands and
clasping them entreatingly before her, "we have come to seek vengeance
upon this _misérable_! This _villain m'sieu_! He has taken our money and
made fools of us. Surely you will give us justice!"

"Yes," echoed Lapierre stubbornly, "and the money was my own money,
which I had made from the products of my farming."

A month later Don Pedro Suarez de Moreno, Count de Tinoco, Marquis de la
d'Essa, and Brigadier-General of the Royal Armies of the Philippines and
of Spain, sat at the bar of the General Sessions, twirling his mustache
and uttering loud snorts of contempt while Lapierre and Madame Reddon
told their story to an almost incredulous yet sympathetic jury.

But the real trial began only when he arose to take the witness chair in
his own behalf. Apparently racked with pain, and laboring under the most
frightful physical infirmities, the General, through an interpreter,
introduced himself to the jury by all his titles, asserting that he had
inherited his patents of nobility from the "Prince of Arras," from whom
he was descended, and that he was in very truth "General-in-Chief of the
Armies of the King of Spain, General Secretary of War, and Custodian of
the Royal Seal." He admitted telling the Lapierres that they were the
heirs of five hundred million dollars, but he had himself honestly
believed it. When he and the rest of them had discovered their common
error they had turned upon him and were now hounding him out of revenge.
The courtly General was as _distingué_ as ever as he addressed the
hard-headed jury of tradesmen before him. As what _canaille_ he must
have regarded them! What a position for the "Count de Tinoco"!