veil."

"What did they say to each other?"

"Well--a pious person, with a prayer-book in her hand--what could she
say? She asked the Abbe's blessing and went on her knees."

"Did they talk together a long time?"

"Not five minutes; but we none of us understood what they said; they
spoke Spanish no doubt."

"Tell us everything, monsieur," the public prosecutor insisted. "I
repeat, the very smallest detail is to us of the first importance. Let
this be a caution to you."

"She was crying, monsieur."

"Really weeping?"

"That we could not see, she hid her face in her handkerchief. She left
three hundred francs in gold for the prisoners."

"That was not she!" said Camusot.

"Bibi-Lupin at once said, 'She is a thief!'" said Monsieur Gault.

"He knows the tribe," said Monsieur de Granville.--"Get out your
warrant," he added, turning to Camusot, "and have seals placed on
everything in her house--at once! But how can she have got hold of
Monsieur de Serizy's recommendation?--Bring me the order--and go,
Monsieur Gault; send me that Abbe immediately. So long as we have him
safe, the danger cannot be greater. And in the course of two hours' talk
you get a long way into a man's mind."

"Especially such a public prosecutor as you are," said Camusot
insidiously.

"There will be two of us," replied Monsieur de Granville politely.

And he became discursive once more.

"There ought to be created for every prison parlor, a post of
superintendent, to be given with a good salary to the cleverest and most
energetic police officers," said he, after a long pause. "Bibi-Lupin
ought to end his days in such a place. Then we should have an eye and
ear on the watch in a department that needs closer supervision than it
gets.--Monsieur Gault could tell us nothing positive."

"He has so much to do," said Camusot. "Still, between these secret cells
and us there lies a gap which ought not to exist. On the way from the
Conciergerie to the judges' rooms there are passages, courtyards, and
stairs. The attention of the agents cannot be unflagging, whereas the
prisoner is always alive to his own affairs.

"I was told that a lady had already placed herself in the way of Jacques
Collin when he was brought up from the cells to be examined. That
woman got into the guardroom at the top of the narrow stairs from the
mousetrap; the ushers told me, and I blamed the gendarmes."

"Oh! the Palais needs entire reconstruction," said Monsieur de
G