Peyrade grew older, his love for his natural daughter had increased.
For her sake he had adopted his citizen guise, for he intended that his
Lydie should marry respectably. So for the last three years he had been
especially anxious to find a corner, either at the Prefecture of Police,
or in the general Police Office--some ostensible and recognized post.
He had ended by inventing a place, of which the necessity, as he told
Corentin, would sooner or later be felt. He was anxious to create an
inquiry office at the Prefecture of Police, to be intermediate between
the Paris police in the strictest sense, the criminal police, and the
superior general police, so as to enable the supreme board to profit by
the various scattered forces. No one but Peyrade, at his age, and after
fifty-five years of confidential work, could be the connecting link
between the three branches of the police, or the keeper of the records
to whom political and judicial authority alike could apply for the
elucidation of certain cases. By this means Peyrade hoped, with
Corentin's assistance, to find a husband and scrape together a portion
for his little Lydie. Corentin had already mentioned the matter to
the Director-General of the police forces of the realm, without naming
Peyrade; and the Director-General, a man from the south, thought it
necessary that the suggestion should come from the chief of the city
police.

At the moment when Contenson struck three raps on the table with the
gold piece, a signal conveying, "I want to speak to you," the senior was
reflecting on this problem: "By whom, and under what pressure can the
Prefet of Police be made to move?"--And he looked like a noodle studying
his _Courrier Francais_.

"Poor Fouche!" thought he to himself, as he made his way along the Rue
Saint-Honore, "that great man is dead! our go-betweens with Louis XVIII.
are out of favor. And besides, as Corentin said only yesterday, nobody
believes in the activity or the intelligence of a man of seventy. Oh,
why did I get into a habit of dining at Very's, of drinking choice
wines, of singing _La Mere Godichon_, of gambling when I am in funds?
To get a place and keep it, as Corentin says, it is not enough to be
clever, you must have the gift of management. Poor dear M. Lenoir was
right when he wrote to me in the matter of the Queen's necklace, 'You
will never do any good,' when he heard that I did not stay under that
slut Oliva's bed."

If the venerable Pere