s, the lad is innocent----"

"How am I to get the letters?" asked the public prosecutor. "It is my
right and my business to convince myself that you are the man you say
you are. I must have you without conditions."

"Send a man you can trust to the Flower Market on the quay. At the door
of a tinman's shop, under the sign of Achilles' shield----"

"That house?"

"Yes," said Jacques Collin, smiling bitterly, "my shield is there.--Your
man will see an old woman dressed, as I told you before, like a
fish-woman who has saved money--earrings in her ears, and clothes like a
rich market-woman's. He must ask for Madame de Saint-Esteve. Do not
omit the DE. And he must say, 'I have come from the public prosecutor
to fetch you know what.'--You will immediately receive three sealed
packets."

"All the letters are there?" said Monsieur de Granville.

"There is no tricking you; you did not get your place for nothing!"
said Jacques Collin, with a smile. "I see you still think me capable
of testing you and giving you so much blank paper.--No; you do not know
me," said he. "I trust you as a son trusts his father."

"You will be taken back to the Conciergerie," said the magistrate, "and
there await a decision as to your fate."

Monsieur de Granville rang, and said to the office-boy who answered:

"Beg Monsieur Garnery to come here, if he is in his room."

Besides the forty-eight police commissioners who watch over Paris like
forty-eight petty Providences, to say nothing of the guardians of Public
Safety--and who have earned the nickname of quart d'oeil, in thieves'
slang, a quarter of an eye, because there are four of them to each
district,--besides these, there are two commissioners attached equally
to the police and to the legal authorities, whose duty it is to
undertake delicate negotiation, and not frequently to serve as deputies
to the examining judges. The office of these two magistrates, for police
commissioners are also magistrates, is known as the Delegates' office;
for they are, in fact, delegated on each occasion, and formally
empowered to carry out inquiries or arrests.

These functions demand men of ripe age, proved intelligence, great
rectitude, and perfect discretion; and it is one of the miracles wrought
by Heaven in favor of Paris, that some men of that stamp are always
forthcoming. Any description of the Palais de Justice would be
incomplete without due mention of these _preventive_ officials, as they
may be