erful
bankers, seized their books and made them go away with him in a cab. He
had followed, by order, the intrigues of more than one fine lady, who
owed to him her salvation. What if M. Bernardet had thought fit to
speak? But he never spoke, and reporters came out worsted from any
attempt at an interview with him. "An interview is silver, but silence
is gold," he was wont to say, for he was not a fool.

He had assisted at spiritual seances and attended secret meetings of
Anarchists. He had occupied himself with occult matters, consulting the
magicians of chance, and he had at his tongue's end the list of
conspirators. He knew the true names of the famous Greeks who shuffled
cards as one scouts about under an assumed name. The gambling hells were
all familiar to him; he knew the churches in whose dark corners
associates assembled to talk of _affairs_, who did not wish to be seen
in beer shops nor spied upon in cabarets.

Of the millions in Paris, he knew the secrets of this whirlpool of
humanity.

Oh! if he had ever become prefect of police, he would have studied his
Paris, not at a distance, looking up statistics in books, or from the
windows of a police bureau, but in the streets, in wretched lodgings, in
hovels, in the asylums of misery and of crime. But Bernardet was not
ambitious. Life suited him very well as he found it. His good wife had
brought to him a small dower, and Bernardet, content with this poor
little fortune, found that he had all the power he wanted--the power,
when occasion demanded, of putting his hand on the shoulder of a former
Minister and of taking a murderer by the throat.

One day a financier, threatened with imprisonment in Mazas, pleased him
very much. Bernardet entered his office to arrest him. He did not wish
to have a row in the bank. The police officer and banker found
themselves alone, face to face, in a very small room, a private office,
with heavy curtains and a thick carpet, which stifled all noise.

"Fifty thousand francs if you will let me escape," said the banker.

"Monsieur le Comte jests"----

"A hundred thousand!"

"The pleasantry is very great, but it is a pleasantry."

Then the Count, very pale, said: "And what if I crack your head?"

"My brother officers are waiting for me," Bernardet simply replied.
"They know that our interview does not promise to be a long one, and
this last proposition, which I wish to forget like the others, would
only aggravate, I believe, i