think my downfall so very strange. Let me pass! make way! if you
please."

He advanced with his head haughtily erect, and would actually have
made his escape if a frightened servant had not at that moment appeared
crying: "Monsieur--Monsieur le Baron! a commissary of police is
downstairs. He is coming up. He has a warrant!"

The marquis's frenzied assurance deserted him. He turned even paler
than he already was if that were possible, and reeled like an ox
but partially stunned by the butcher's hammer. Suddenly a desperate
resolution could be read in his eyes, the resolution of the condemned
criminal, who, knowing that he cannot escape the scaffold, ascends it
with a firm step.

He hastily approached Baron Trigault, and asked in a husky voice: "Will
you allow me to be arrested in your house, baron? me--a Valorsay!"

It might have been supposed that the baron had expected this reproach,
for without a word he led the marquis and M. de Coralth to a little room
at the end of the hall, pushed them inside, and closed the door again.

It was time he did so, for the commissary of police was already upon
the threshold. "Which of you gentlemen is the Marquis de Valorsay?" he
asked. "Which of you is Paul Violaine, alias the Viscount de----"

The sharp report of firearms suddenly interrupted him. Every one at once
rushed to the little room, where the wretched men had been conducted.
There extended, face upward, on the floor, lay the Marquis de Valorsay,
with his brains oozing from his fractured skull, and his right hand
still clutching a revolver. He was dead. "And the other!" cried the
throng; "the other!"

The open window, and a curtain rudely torn from its fastenings and
secured to the balustrade, told how M. de Coralth had made his escape.
It was not till later that people learned what precautions the baron
had taken. On the table in that room he had laid two revolvers, and
two packages containing ten thousand francs each. The viscount had not
hesitated.

* * * * *

Pascal Ferailleur and Mademoiselle Marguerite de Chalusse were married
at the church of Saint Etienne du Mont, only a few steps from the Rue
d'Ulm. Those who knew the mystery connected with the bride's parentage
were greatly astonished when they saw Baron Trigault act as a witness on
this occasion, in company with the venerable justice of the peace. But
such was the fact, nevertheless. Treated more and more outrageously by
his daughter and her husband, se