Excerpt from The Embezzler The apartment, rented for sixty francs a year, was composed of four enormous rooms that it was impossible to heat. Madame Burle slept in the largest room; her son, the captain-treasurer, had taken the room over looking the street] near the dining-room; and little Charles, in his small iron bed, was lost in the depths of an immense draw ing-room with mildewed hangings, which was not used. The few articles of furniture belonging to Captain Burle and his mother, massive mahogany of the Empire period, that the frequent moving from one barrack to another had indented and robbed of their copper trimmings, were dwarfed beneath the high ceilings, from which seemed to fall a fine shadowy dust. The tiled floor, painted red, cold and hard, froze one's feet; and, in front of the chairs, there was nothing but small squares of worn-out carpet betokening. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.