rsonage; the reporters created
legends about him; some declared him guilty and brought up in support of
their conviction some anecdotes, some tales from the clubs, given as
proofs; others asked if the suppositions were sufficiently well based to
accuse a man in advance of trial, and these latter ardently took up his
defense. Paul Rodier had even, with much dexterity and eloquence,
diplomatically written two articles, one on either side of the question.

"It is," he said to himself, "the sure way of having told the truth on
one side or the other."

Bernardet did not renounce for an instant the hope of finding the man
who had sold the picture. It was not the first time that he had picked
the needle from a cartful of hay. Paris is large, but this human sea has
its particular currents, as the ocean has special tides, and the police
officer knew it well. Here or there, some day he would meet the man,
cast up by the torrent like a waif.

First of all, the man was probably a stranger from some foreign land.
Wearing a hat like a Spaniard, he had not had time to change the style
of dress of the country from which he had come in search of adventures.
Bernardet haunted the hotels, searched the registers, made conversation
with the lodgers. He found poor persons who had come from foreign
countries, but whose motives for coming to Paris were all right.
Bernardet never stopped searching a moment; he went everywhere, curious
and prying--and it pleased him, when he found a leisure evening, to go
to some of the strange wine shops or ale houses (called cabarets) to
find subjects for observation. These cabarets are very numerous on the
outskirts of Montmartre, in the streets and boulevards at the foot of
the Butte. Bizarre inventions, original and disagreeable creations,
where the ingenuity of the enterprisers sometimes made them hideous in
order to attract; to cater to the idle, and to hold the loungers from
among the higher classes. Cabarets born of the need for novelty, which
might stimulate the blase; the demand for something eccentric almost to
morbid irony. A _Danse Macabre_ trod to the measures of an operetta;
pleasantries of the bunglers adopting the cure-alls of the saw-bones,
and juggling with their empty heads while dreaming the dreams of a
Hamlet.

Cabaret du Squelette!

The announcement of the droll promises--apparitions, visions,
phantoms--had often made him smile when he passed near there to go to
the Prefecture; this