"

"Well, no," replied Thuillier, striking his hand upon the table, "I
shall not name him, because of the sentiments of esteem and affection
which formerly united us; but you have understood me, Monsieur la
Peyrade."

"I ought to have known," said the Provencal, in a voice changed by
emotion, "that in bringing a serpent to this place I should soon be
soiled by his venom. Poor fool! do you not see that you have made
yourself the echo of Cerizet's calumny?"

"Cerizet has nothing to do with it; on the contrary, he has told me
the highest good of you. How was it, not having a penny the night
before,--and I had reason to know it,--that you were able to pay Dutocq
the round sum of twenty-five thousand francs the next day?"

La Peyrade reflected for a moment.

"No," he said, "it was not Dutocq who told you that. He is not a man to
wrestle with an enemy of my strength without a strong interest in it. It
was Cerizet; he's the infamous calumniator, from whose hands I wrenched
the lease of your house near the Madeleine,--Cerizet, whom in kindness,
I went to seek on his dunghill that I might give him the chance of
honorable employment; that is the wretch, to whom a benefit is only an
encouragement to treachery. Tiens! if I were to tell you what that man
is I should turn you sick with disgust; in the sphere of infamy he has
discovered worlds."

This time Thuillier made an able reply.

"I don't know anything about Cerizet except through you," he said;
"you introduced him to me as a manager, offering every guarantee; but,
allowing him to be blacker than the devil, and supposing that this
communication comes from him, I don't see, my friend, that all that
makes YOU any the whiter."

"No doubt I was to blame," said la Peyrade, "for putting such a man into
relations with you; but we wanted some one who understood journalism,
and that value he really had for us. But who can ever sound the depths
of souls like his? I thought him reformed. A manager, I said to myself,
is only a machine; he can do no harm. I expected to find him a man of
straw; well, I was mistaken, he will never be anything but a man of
mud."

"All that is very fine," said Thuillier, "but those twenty-five thousand
francs found so conveniently in your possession, where did you get them?
That is the point you are forgetting to explain."

"But to reason about it," said la Peyrade; "a man of my character in the
pay of the police and yet so poor that I could not pa