er he
brought upon the scene to take part in the strange drama, so that his
listener was bewildered and dazzled by his brilliant acting.

As Prosper listened to this narrative of events happening twenty years
back, the secret conversations as minutely related as if overheard the
moment they took place, it sounded more like a romance than a statement
of plain facts.

All these ingenious explanations might be logical, but what foundation
did they possess? Might they not be the dreams of an excited
imagination?

M. Verduret did not finish his report until four o'clock in the morning;
then he cried, with an accent of triumph:

"And now they are on their guard, and sharp, wary rascals too: but they
won't escape me; I have cornered them beautifully. Before a week is
over, Prosper, you will be publicly exonerated, and will come out of
this scrape with flying colors. I have promised your father you shall."

"Impossible!" said Prosper in a dazed way, "it cannot be!"

"What?"

"All this you have just told me."

M. Verduret opened wide his eyes, as if he could not understand anyone
having the audacity to doubt the accuracy of _his_ report.

"Impossible, indeed!" he cried. "What! have you not sense enough to see
the plain truth written all over every fact, and attested by the best
authority? Your thick-headedness exasperates me to the last degree."

"But how can such rascalities take place in Paris, in our very midst,
without----"

"Parbleu!" interrupted the fat man, "you are young, my friend! Are you
innocent enough to suppose that crimes, forty times worse than this,
don't occur every day? You think the horrors of the police-court are
the only ones. Pooh! You only read in the _Gazette des Tribunaux_ of the
cruel melodramas of life, where the actors are as cowardly as the knife,
and as treacherous as the poison they use. It is at the family fireside,
often under shelter of the law itself, that the real tragedies of
life are acted; in modern crimes the traitors wear gloves, and cloak
themselves with public position; the victims die, smiling to the last,
without revealing the torture they have endured to the end. Why, what
I have just related to you is an everyday occurrence; and you profess
astonishment."

"I can't help wondering how you discovered all this tissue of crime."

"Ah, that is the point!" said the fat man with a self-satisfied smile.
"When I undertake a task, I devote my whole attention to it. Now, make