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 Haribada, 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, and my breast was oppressed with grief, and 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 Indian looked at me with stupefaction, 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 I made a sign to Haribada to go away, so that he might not see my tears; and I spent the night on the gallery that looked on to the lake, on the gallery where I had so often held the poor child on my knees.
I pictured to myself her pretty little body lying decomposed in a sack in the dark waters beneath me, which we had so often looked at together formerly.
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.
Mme. Oreille was a very economical woman; she thoroughly knew the value of a halfpenny, and possessed a whole storehouse of strict principles with regard to the multiplication of money, so that her cook found the greatest difficulty in making what the servants call their _market-penny_, while her husband was hardly allowed any pocket-money at all. They were, however, very comfortably off, and had no children; but it really pained Mme. Oreille to see any money spent; it was like tearing at her heartstrings when she had to take any of those nice crown-pieces out of her pocket; and whenever she had to spend anything, no matter how necessary it was, she slept badly the next night.