by his vices, and as calm as Vitellius, whose
imperial and portly stomach reappeared in him palingenetically, so to
speak.

In 1816 a young commercial traveler named Gaudissart, who frequented
the Cafe David, sat drinking from eleven o'clock till midnight with a
half-pay officer. He was so rash as to discuss a conspiracy against the
Bourbons, a rather serious plot then on the point of execution. There
was no one to be seen in the cafe but Pere Canquoelle, who seemed to
be asleep, two waiters who were dozing, and the accountant at the desk.
Within four-and-twenty hours Gaudissart was arrested, the plot was
discovered. Two men perished on the scaffold. Neither Gaudissart nor any
one else ever suspected that worthy old Canquoelle of having peached.
The waiters were dismissed; for a year they were all on their guard and
afraid of the police--as Pere Canquoelle was too; indeed, he talked of
retiring from the Cafe David, such horror had he of the police.

Contenson went into the cafe, asked for a glass of brandy, and did not
look at Canquoelle, who sat reading the papers; but when he had gulped
down the brandy, he took out the Baron's gold piece, and called the
waiter by rapping three short raps on the table. The lady at the
desk and the waiter examined the coin with a minute care that was not
flattering to Contenson; but their suspicions were justified by the
astonishment produced on all the regular customers by Contenson's
appearance.

"Was that gold got by theft or by murder?"

This was the idea that rose to some clear and shrewd minds as they
looked at Contenson over their spectacles, while affecting to read the
news. Contenson, who saw everything and never was surprised at anything,
scornfully wiped his lips with a bandana, in which there were but three
darns, took his change, slipped all the coppers into his side pocket,
of which the lining, once white, was now as black as the cloth of the
trousers, and did not leave one for the waiter.

"What a gallows-bird!" said Pere Canquoelle to his neighbor Monsieur
Pillerault.

"Pshaw!" said Monsieur Camusot to all the company, for he alone had
expressed no astonishment, "it is Contenson, Louchard's right-hand man,
the police agent we employ in business. The rascals want to nab some one
who is hanging about perhaps."

It would seem necessary to explain here the terrible and profoundly
cunning man who was hidden under the guise of Pere Canquoelle, as
Vautrin was hidden u