e uttered none but inarticulate sounds.

He looked at her for a moment, then poured himself out a glass of
champagne and drank it down at a gulp. He took a few steps up and down
the room, came back to her and said:

"Listen to me, darling..."

The insult made her quiver with an unexpected energy. She drew herself
up and, panting with indignation, said:

"I forbid you... I forbid you to speak to me like that. I will not
accept such an outrage. You wretch!..."

He shrugged his shoulders and resumed:

"Pah, I see you're not quite alive to the position. That comes,
of course, because you still hope for assistance in some quarter.
Prasville, perhaps? The excellent Prasville, whose right hand you are...
My dear friend, a forlorn hope... You must know that Prasville is mixed
up in the Canal affair! Not directly: that is to say, his name is not on
the list of the Twenty-seven; but it is there under the name of one of
his friends, an ex-deputy called Vorenglade, Stanislas Vorenglade, his
man of straw, apparently: a penniless individual whom I left alone and
rightly. I knew nothing of all that until this morning, when, lo and
behold, I received a letter informing me of the existence of a bundle of
documents which prove the complicity of our one and only Prasville!
And who is my informant? Vorenglade himself! Vorenglade, who, tired of
living in poverty, wants to extort money from Prasville, at the risk of
being arrested, and who will be delighted to come to terms with me. And
Prasville will get the sack. Oh, what a lark! I swear to you that
he will get the sack, the villain! By Jove, but he's annoyed me long
enough! Prasville, old boy, you've deserved it..."

He rubbed his hands together, revelling in his coming revenge. And he
continued:

"You see, my dear Clarisse... there's nothing to be done in that
direction. What then? What straw will you cling to? Why, I was
forgetting: M. Arsene Lupin! Mr. Growler! Mr. Masher!... Pah, you'll
admit that those gentlemen have not shone and that all their feats of
prowess have not prevented me from going my own little way. It was bound
to be. Those fellows imagine that there's no one to equal them. When
they meet an adversary like myself, one who is not to be bounced, it
upsets them and they make blunder after blunder, while still believing
that they are hoodwinking him like mad. Schoolboys, that's what
they are! However, as you seem to have some illusions left about the
aforesaid Lu