was he from? He said that he came from Sydney, where he was
connected with a commercial house. Or rather he had given up the
situation to come to Paris to seek his fortune. But while speaking of
Sydney he had in his rather rambling answers let fall the name of Buenos
Ayres, and Bernardet remembered that Buenos Ayres was the place where M.
Rovere had been French Consul. The officer paid no attention to this at
the time. For what good? Prades's real examination would be conducted by
M. Ginory. He, Bernardet, was not an examining magistrate. He was the
ferret who hunted out criminals.

This Prades was stupefied, then furious, when, the examination over, he
learned that he was not to be immediately set at liberty.

What! An absurd quarrel, a collision without a wound, in a street in
Paris, was sufficient to hold a man and make him pass the night in the
station house, with all the vagabonds of both sexes collected there!

"You may bemoan your fate to yourself to-morrow morning!" said
Bernardet.

In the meantime they searched this man, who, very pale, making visibly
powerful efforts to control himself, biting his lips and his black
beard, while they examined his pocketbook, while they looked at a
Spanish knife with a short blade, which he had (Bernardet had divined it
at the time of his arrest) in his right pocket.

The pocketbook revealed nothing. It contained some receipted weekly
bills of the hotel in the Rue de Paradis, some envelopes without
letters, without stamps and bearing the name, "Charles Prades,
Merchant," two bank bills of 100 francs--nothing more.

Bernardet very simply asked Prades how it was that he had upon his
person addressed letters which he evidently had not received, as they
were not stamped. He replied:

"They are not letters. They are addresses which I gave instead of
visiting cards, as I had not had time to procure cards."

"Then the addresses are in your writing?"

"Yes," Prades answered.

The police officer looked at them again; then, saluting the brigadier
and his men, wished them good-night, and even added a little gesture,
rather mocking, in the direction of the arrested man. Prades made an
angry, almost menacing, movement toward Bernardet. The guards standing
about pulled him back, while the plump, smiling little man, caressing
his sandy mustache and humming a tune, went out into the street.

As he reached the passage which led to his house this couplet came
merrily from his lips