end of his resources, after having searched for fortune
among miners, weary of tramping about in America, he embarked one
morning for Havre, with the idea that the best gold mine was still that
living placer which he had exploited in Buenos Ayres, and which was
called Pierre Rovere.

At Paris, where he knew the Consul had retired, Prades soon found trace
of him, and learned where was the retreat of his brother-in-law. His
brother-in-law! He pronounced the word with a wicked sneer, as if it had
for him a something understood about the sweet and maiden remembrance of
the dead girl. There, in gay Paris, with some resources which allowed
him to pay for his board and lodging in a third-rate hotel, he searched,
asked, discovered, at last, the address of the ex-Consul, and presented
himself to Rovere, who felt, at sight of this spectre, his anger return.

The first time that Charles Prades had asked at the lodge if M. Rovere
was at home, the Moniches had permitted him to go upstairs, and perhaps
Mme. Moniche would have suspected the man in the sombrero if she had not
surprised Jacques Dantin before the open safe and the papers.

Prades, moreover, had appeared only three times at Rovere's house, and
on the day of the murder he had entered at the moment when Mme. Moniche
was sweeping the upper floors, and Moniche was working in his shop in
the rear of the lodge, and the staircase was empty. He rang, and
Rovere, with dragging steps, came to open the door. Rovere was ill and
was a little ennuied, and he believed, or instinctively hoped, that it
was the woman in black--his daughter!

Everything served Prades's projects. He had come not to kill, but by
some means to gain entrance to Rovere's apartments, and, when once
there, to find some resource--a loan, more or less freely given, more or
less forced--and he would leave with it.

Rovere, already worn out, weary of his former supplications, felt
tempted to shut the door in his face, but Prades pushed it back,
entered, closed it, and said:

"A last interview! You will never see me again! But listen to me!"

Then, Rovere allowed him to enter the salon, and despite the terrible
weakness which he experienced wished to make this a final, decisive
interview; to disembarrass himself once for all of this everlasting
beggar, sometimes whining, sometimes threatening.

"Will you not let me die in peace?" he said. "Have I not paid my debt?"

But Prades had seated himself in a fauteuil,