all. He entered the library one morning feigning
to come as a book-lover, but he soon showed that he knew nothing about
books. While all the busts of the ancient philosophers were reflected in
his shining pate, he put divers insidious questions to Monsieur
Sariette, who grew uncomfortable and turned red, for innocence is easily
flustered. From that moment Monsieur des Aubels had a mighty suspicion
that Monsieur Sariette was the perpetrator of the very thefts he
denounced with horror; and it immediately occurred to him to seek out
the accomplices of the crime. As regards motives, he did not trouble
about them; motives are always to be found. Monsieur des Aubels told
Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu that, if he liked, he would have the house
secretly watched by a detective from the Prefecture.

"I will see that you get Mignon," he said. "He is an excellent servant,
assiduous and prudent."

By six o'clock next morning Mignon was already walking up and down
outside the d'Esparvieus' house, his head sunk between his shoulders,
wearing love-locks which showed from under the narrow brim of his bowler
hat, his eye cocked over his shoulder. He wore an enormous dull-black
moustache, his hands and feet were huge; in fact, his whole appearance
was distinctly memorable. He paced regularly up and down from the
nearest of the big rams' head pillars which adorn the Hotel de la
Sordiere to the end of the Rue Garanciere, towards the apse of St.
Sulpice Church and the dome of the Chapel of the Virgin.

Henceforth it became impossible to enter or leave the d'Esparvieus'
house without feeling that one's every action, that one's very thoughts,
were being spied upon. Mignon was a prodigious person endowed with
powers that Nature denies to other mortals. He neither ate nor slept. At
all hours of the day and night, in wind and rain, he was to be found
outside the house, and no one escaped the X-rays of his eye. One felt
pierced through and through, penetrated to the very marrow, worse than
naked, bare as a skeleton. It was the affair of a moment; the detective
did not even stop, but continued his everlasting walk. It became
intolerable. Young Maurice threatened to leave the paternal roof if he
was to be so radiographed. His mother and his sister Berthe complained
of his piercing look; it offended the chaste modesty of their souls.
Mademoiselle Caporal, young Leon d'Esparvieu's governess, felt an
indescribable embarrassment. Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu