his haste to arrive at M. Daburon's he did not take a
cab. He felt the necessity of walking. He was one of those who require
exercise to see things clearly. When he moved about his ideas fitted and
classified themselves in his brain, like grains of wheat when shaken in
a bushel. Without hastening his pace, he reached the Rue de la Chaussee
d'Antin, crossed the Boulevard with its resplendent cafes, and turned to
the Rue Richelieu.

He walked along, unconscious of external objects, tripping and stumbling
over the inequalities of the sidewalk, or slipping on the greasy
pavement. If he followed the proper road, it was a purely mechanical
impulse that guided him. His mind was wandering at random through the
field of probabilities, and following in the darkness the mysterious
thread, the almost imperceptible end of which he had seized at La
Jonchere.

Like all persons labouring under strong emotion without knowing it, he
talked aloud, little thinking into what indiscreet ears his exclamations
and disjointed phrases might fall. At every step, we meet in Paris
people babbling to themselves, and unconsciously confiding to the four
winds of heaven their dearest secrets, like cracked vases that allow
their contents to steal away. Often the passers-by mistake these
eccentric monologuists for lunatics. Sometimes the curious follow them,
and amuse themselves by receiving these strange confidences. It was
an indiscretion of this kind which told the ruin of Riscara the rich
banker. Lambreth, the assassin of the Rue de Venise, betrayed himself in
a similar manner.

"What luck!" exclaimed old Tabaret. "What an incredible piece of good
fortune! Gevrol may dispute it if he likes, but after all, chance is the
cleverest agent of the police. Who would have imagined such a history? I
was not, however, very far from the reality. I guessed there was a
child in the case. But who would have dreamed of a substitution?--an old
sensational effect, that playwrights no longer dare make use of. This
is a striking example of the danger of following preconceived ideas in
police investigation. We are affrighted at unlikelihood; and, as in this
case, the greatest unlikelihood often proves to be the truth. We
retire before the absurd, and it is the absurd that we should examine.
Everything is possible. I would not take a thousand crowns for what
I have learnt this evening. I shall kill two birds with one stone. I
deliver up the criminal; and I give Noel a