l that do?' And taking up a
pen he scratched some figures on a piece of paper.

Lajolais smiled dubiously, and added a unit to the left of the sum.

'What! a hundred and fifty thousand francs!' cried Fouche.

'And a cheap bargain, too,' said the other; 'for, after all, it is
only the price of a ticket in the lottery, of which the great prize is
General Ney!'

'You say truly,' said the Minister; 'be it so.'

'Write your name there, then,' said Lajolais, 'beneath those figures;
that will be warranty sufficient for my negotiation, and leave the rest
to me.'

'Nature evidently meant you for a _chef de police_, Master Lajolais.'

'Or a cardinal, Monsieur le Ministre,' said the other, as he folded up
the paper--a little insignificant slip, scrawled over with a few figures
and an almost illegible word, and yet pregnant with infamy to one,
banishment to another, ruin and insanity to a third.

This sad record need not be carried further. It is far from a pleasant
task to tell of baseness unredeemed by one trait of virtue--of
treachery, unrepented even by regret. History records Moreau's
unhappy destiny; the pages of private memoir tell of Ney's disastrous
connection; our own humble reminiscences speak of poor Mahon's fate,
the least known of all, but the most sorrowful victim of a woman's
treachery!

CHAPTER XLVI. A GLANCE AT THE 'PREFECTURE DE POLICE'

Poor Mahon's melancholy story made a deep impression upon me, and I
returned to Paris execrating the whole race of spies and _mouchards_,
and despising, with a most hearty contempt, a Government compelled
to use such agencies for its existence. It seemed to me so utterly
impossible to escape the snares of a system so artfully interwoven,
and so vain to rely on innocence as a protection, that I felt a kind
of reckless hardihood as to whatever might betide me, and rode into the
_cour_ of the Prefecture with a bold indifference as to my fate that I
have often wondered at since.

The horse on which I was mounted was immediately recognised as I
entered; and the obsequious salutations that met me showed that I was
regarded as one of the trusty followers of the Minister; and in this
capacity was I ushered into a large waiting-room, where a considerable
number of persons were assembled, whose air and appearance, now that
necessity for disguise was over, unmistakably pronounced them to be
spies of the police. Some, indeed, were occupied in taking off their
false whiske