iving me. I am sixty myself, and I can do without
'em.--However, if the case is as you state it, I quite understand that
you should have found it necessary to get yourself up as a foreigner to
indulge your fancy."

"You can understand that Peyrade, or old Canquoelle of the Rue des
Moineaux----"

"Ay, neither of them would have suited Madame du Val-Noble," Carlos
put in, delighted to have picked up Canquoelle's address. "Before
the Revolution," he went on, "I had for my mistress a woman who had
previously been kept by the gentleman-in-waiting, as they then called
the executioner. One evening at the play she pricked herself with a pin,
and cried out--a customary ejaculation in those days--'Ah! Bourreau!' on
which her neighbor asked her if this were a reminiscence?--Well, my dear
Peyrade, she cast off her man for that speech.

"I suppose you have no wish to expose yourself to such a slap in the
face.--Madame du Val-Noble is a woman for gentlemen. I saw her once at
the opera, and thought her very handsome.

"Tell the driver to go back to the Rue de la Paix, my dear Peyrade. I
will go upstairs with you to your rooms and see for myself. A verbal
report will no doubt be enough for Monsieur le Prefet."

Carlos took a snuff-box from his side-pocket--a black snuff-box
lined with silver-gilt--and offered it to Peyrade with an impulse of
delightful good-fellowship. Peyrade said to himself:

"And these are their agents! Good Heavens! what would Monsieur Lenoir
say if he could come back to life, or Monsieur de Sartines?"

"That is part of the truth, no doubt, but it is not all," said the sham
lawyer, sniffing up his pinch of snuff. "You have had a finger in the
Baron de Nucingen's love affairs, and you wish, no doubt, to entangle
him in some slip-knot. You missed fire with the pistol, and you are
aiming at him with a field-piece. Madame du Val-Noble is a friend of
Madame de Champy's----"

"Devil take it. I must take care not to founder," said Peyrade to
himself. "He is a better man than I thought him. He is playing me; he
talks of letting me go, and he goes on making me blab."

"Well?" asked Carlos with a magisterial air.

"Monsieur, it is true that I have been so foolish as to seek a woman in
Monsieur de Nucingen's behoof, because he was half mad with love. That
is the cause of my being out of favor, for it would seem that quite
unconsciously I touched some important interests."

The officer of the law remained immovabl