how
the public would take things, and Caffarelli's letter presaged no good;
what would it be when it became known that the gendarme assassins had
acted with the authorisation of the government? Happily, a confusion
arose that retarded the discovery of the truth. In the hope of
determining the dead man's identity, the Mayor of Luc had exposed the
body to view, and many had come to see it, including some people from
Caen. Four of these had unanimously recognised the corpse as that of a
clock-maker of Paris, named Morin-Cochu, well known at the fairs of
Lower Normandy. Fouche allowed the public to follow this false trail,
and it was wonderful to see his lieutenants, Desmarets, Veyrat, Real
himself, looking for Morin-Cochu all over Paris as if they were
ignorant of the personality of their victim. And when Morin-Cochu was
found alive and well in his shop in the Rue Saint-Denis, which he had
not left for four years, they began just as zealously to look for his
agent Festau, who might well be the murdered man.

Caffarelli, however, was not to be caught in this clumsy trap. He knew
how matters stood now, and showed his indignation. He wrote very
courageously to Real: "You will doubtless ask me, M. le Comte, why I
have not tried to show up the truth? My answer is simple: it is publicly
rumoured that the expedition of the gendarmes was ordered by M. the
Senator Comte de P----, to whom were given the papers found on the
murdered man, and who has gone to Paris, no doubt to transmit them to
his Excellency the Minister of Police. Ought I not to respect the secret
of the authorities?"

And all that had occurred in his department for the two last years that
it had not been considered advisable to tell him of, all the
irregularities that in his desire for peace he had thought he should
shut his eyes to, all the affronts that he had patiently endured, came
back to his mind. He felt his heart swell with disgust at cowardly acts,
dishonourable tools, and odious snares, and nobly explained his
feelings:

"Certainly I am not jealous of executing severe measures and I should
like never to have any of that kind to enforce. But I owe it to myself
as well as to the dignity of my office not to remain prefect in name
only, and if any motives whatever can destroy confidence in me to this
point on important matters I must simply be told of it and I shall know
how to resign without murmuring. It is not permissible to treat a man
whose honesty an