e were then
the theatres. In those days of bloodshed and battle, of victory and
triumph, Pierre Lacour, who had commenced his military career as a
brave young soldier, might have risen to the highest honors, had he
followed the victorious eagles of his emperor. Why might not he rise
as well as Murat, Ney, Lannes, or a hundred others? The epaulets of a
colonel, nay, the baton of a marshal of France, were prizes within the
reach of the lowliest, provided he had the head to plan and the heart
to execute daring and chivalric deeds. But his heart no longer bounded
like a war horse to the charge of the trumpet and the roll of the
drum. He lived for one purpose--to discover the assassin of his mother
and the sister, of whom nothing had been heard since the dreadful
night of murder and conflagration. To facilitate his purposes, he had
procured himself to be enrolled in the unrivalled police force of
Fouche. That wily minister had no more able assistant under his
command, and none in that fraternity (of which many were miscreants,
who had purchased impunity for crime by selling the lives and
liberties of former accomplices and comrades) who could compare with
him for purity of life and elevation of motive. To punish evil for the
sake of society, was the aim of the young police officer. None more
untiring or intelligent than he in ferreting out the perpetrators of
deeds of violence. In the criminals whose arrest he effected, and
whose conviction he secured, he expected, constantly, to find some
cognizant of the offence which had thrown so black a shadow over his
life. He read with eager avidity the dying confessions of the
condemned. He caught eagerly every syllable that fell from the lips of
men, who, standing on the brink of eternity, seemed to be impressed
with the necessity of revealing truth. But for years his expectations
were baffled.

At last, all Paris was thrown into commotion by the murder of a
Colonel Belleville, an officer who had served with distinction in the
grand army, and who was found dead, one morning, in a room at house
number 96 Rue La Harpe. The only mark of violence discovered by the
surgeons was a dark, purple spot, about the size of a five-franc
piece, on the left temple. The police were apprised that, on the
morning of the day before, a slight young man, with fair hair and
polished address, giving his name as Adolph Belmont, had hired the
room at number 96 Rue La Harpe, and paid a week's rent in advanc