know.

"Good God, I am losing my wits! I ask him where--as if we ever told
them----" thought he.

A few hours before the moment when Peyrade was to be roused in his
garret in the Rue Saint-Georges, Corentin, coming in from his country
place at Passy, had made his way to the Duc de Grandlieu's, in the
costume of a retainer of a superior class. He wore the ribbon of the
Legion of Honor at his button-hole. He had made up a withered old face
with powdered hair, deep wrinkles, and a colorless skin. His eyes
were hidden by tortoise-shell spectacles. He looked like a retired
office-clerk. On giving his name as Monsieur de Saint-Denis, he was led
to the Duke's private room, where he found Derville reading a letter,
which he himself had dictated to one of his agents, the "number" whose
business it was to write documents. The Duke took Corentin aside to tell
him all he already knew. Monsieur de Saint-Denis listened coldly and
respectfully, amusing himself by studying this grand gentleman, by
penetrating the tufa beneath the velvet cover, by scrutinizing this
being, now and always absorbed in whist and in regard for the House of
Grandlieu.

"If you will take my advice, monsieur," said Corentin to Derville,
after being duly introduced to the lawyer, "we shall set out this very
afternoon for Angouleme by the Bordeaux coach, which goes quite as fast
as the mail; and we shall not need to stay there six hours to obtain
the information Monsieur le Duc requires. It will be enough--if I have
understood your Grace--to ascertain whether Monsieur de Rubempre's
sister and brother-in-law are in a position to give him twelve hundred
thousand francs?" and he turned to the Duke.

"You have understood me perfectly," said the Duke.

"We can be back again in four days," Corentin went on, addressing
Derville, "and neither of us will have neglected his business long
enough for it to suffer."

"That was the only difficulty I was about to mention to his Grace," said
Derville. "It is now four o'clock. I am going home to say a word to
my head-clerk, and pack my traveling-bag, and after dinner, at eight
o'clock, I will be----But shall we get places?" he said to Monsieur de
Saint-Denis, interrupting himself.

"I will answer for that," said Corentin. "Be in the yard of the Chief
Office of the Messageries at eight o'clock. If there are no places,
they shall make some, for that is the way to serve Monseigneur le Duc de
Grandlieu."

"Gentlemen," sai