Penny Blood Serial Cover — page 44: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

36 ALFRED DE ROSANN. the wishes of a friend, must have opened his eyes to the ruinous consequences of indifference and inatten- tion to his business—that the partnership between him and La Motte would not have increased that in- attention on the part of a young man of De Rosann’s known-talent and abilities—that De Rosann had often been in La Motte’s private office—that it was fair to argue those visits were for the purpose of looking a little into his atfairs—that however ignorant the ac- cused might be of mercantile transactions, he knew enough to ascertain whether the books were kept in order, whether the receipts equalled the expenditure, and whether those receipts and expenditures were properly balanced—that no sensible man could con- ceive the possibility of the head partner in a large house not knowing whether he had a thousand or a hundred thousand francs a year—and that with regard to the continued absence of the accused from his es- tablishment, he, the Procureur du Roi, had. already called evidence to prove that De Rosann was seen at least on ten different occasions in the private office of La Motte, the time he spent there being quite suff- cient to put him @u courant of the principal features of his affairs, supposing—and the supposition was a fair one—that such was the object of those visits. The public minister then entered minutely upon every particular relative to the forgery. He said that the bills were in the hand-writing of the accused—that not one was drawn up by La Motte—that it could not be proved at what time the bills were fabricated, two hours having elapsed between the moment at which the stamps were purchased and the hour of six when De Rosann sate down to dinner with La Motte—that it was reasonable to suppose that the bills were drawn up before dinner—that the trembling hand in which they were written was as likely to be the effect of extreme agitation as of intoxication— that, when the servant took in the coffee and writing materials to the drawing-room, De Rosann was ina state of ebriety which appeared to defy the possibility GoOmicbooksrco