el. _Helas!_ it's no time for
incredulity, that's certain. But to conclude," said he, turning to the
paper once more: "'The _commissaires de police_ throughout Paris have
received orders to spare no effort to unravel the mystery and detect the
other parties in this unhappy affair.' Military tribunal; prisoners
on parole; rights of hospitality; honor of France; and the old
peroration,--the usual compliment on the wisdom which presides over
every department of state. How weary I do become of all this! Let your
barber puff his dye for the whiskers, or your bootmaker the incomparable
effulgence of his blacking,--the thing is in keeping, no one objects to
it. I don't find fault with my old friend, Pigault Lebrun, if he now and
then plays the critic on himself, and shows the world the beauties they
neglectfully slurred over. But, Burke, have you ever seen a _bureau de
police?_"

"Never; and I have the greatest curiosity to do so."

"Come, then, I 'll be your guide. The _commissaire_ of this quarter
has a very extended jurisdiction, stretching away towards the Bois de
Boulogne, and if there be anything in this report, he is certain to
know it; and assuredly, no other topic will be talked of till to-morrow
evening, for it's not Opera night, and Talma does not play either."

I willingly accepted this proposition; and when our breakfast was over,
we mounted our horses, and set out for the place in question.

"If the forms of justice where we are now going," said Duchesne,
"be divested of much of their pomp and ceremony, be assured of one
thing,--it is not at the expense of the more material essence. Of all
the police tribunals about Paris, this obscure den in the Bue de Dix
Sous is the most effective. Situated in a quarter where crime is as
rife as fever in the Pontine Marshes, it has become acquainted with
the haunts and habits of the lowest class in Paris,--the lowest class,
probably, in any city of Europe. Watching with parental solicitude,
it tracks the criminal from his first step in vice to his last deed in
crime; from his petty theft to his murder. Knowing the necessities to
which poverty impels men, and studying with attention the impulses
that grow up amid despair and hunger, it sees motives through a mist of
intervening circumstances that would baffle less subtle observers, and
can trace the tortuous windings of crime where no other sight could
find the clew. Is it not strange to think with what ingenuity men will
i