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298 down-stairs, telling him that he could come again whenever he pleased, and that their poor dwelling should ever be open to him.

As Edmond passed the door of similar rooms on the fourth floor, he paused to inquire whether Caderousse the tailor still dwelt there; but he received for reply, that the man in question had got into difficulties, and at the present time kept a small inn on the route from Bellegarde to Beaucaire.

Having obtained the address of the person to whom the house in the Allées de Meilhan belonged, Dantès next proceeded thither, and, under the name of Lord Wilmore (the same appellation as that contained in his passport), purchased the small dwelling for the sum of 25,000 francs, at least 10,000 more than it was worth; but had its owner asked ten times the sum he did, it would unhesitatingly have been given.

The very same day the occupants of the apartments on the fifth floor of the house were informed by the notary who had arranged the transfer, that the new landlord gave them their choice of any of the rooms in the house, without the least increase of rent, upon condition of their giving him possession of the two chambers they inhabited.

This strange event occupied for a whole week the inhabitants of of the Allées de Meilhan, and caused a thousand guesses, not one of which came near the truth. But that which puzzled the brains of all was the circumstance of the same stranger who had visited the Allées de Meilhan being seen in the evening walking in the little village of the Catalans, and afterward observed to enter a poor fisherman's hut, and to pass more than an hour in inquiring after persons who had either been dead or gone away for more than fifteen or sixteen years.

But on the following day the family from whom all these particulars had been asked received a handsome present, consisting of an entirely new fishing-boat, with a full supply of excellent nets.

The honest fellows would gladly have poured out their thanks to their benefactor; but they had seen him, on quitting the hut, merely give some orders to a sailor, and then, springing lightly on horseback, quit Marseilles by the Porte d'Aix.