At every step, we meet in Paris people babbling to themselves, and unconsciously confiding to the four winds of heaven their dearest secrets, like cracked vases that allow their contents to steal away.

Often the passers-by mistake these eccentric monologuists for lunatics.

Sometimes the curious follow them, and amuse themselves by receiving these strange confidences.

It was an indiscretion of this kind which told the ruin of Riscara the rich banker.

Lambreth, the assassin of the Rue de Venise, betrayed himself in a similar manner.
"What luck!" exclaimed old Tabaret.