all extraneous surroundings. This conviction was absolute,
instinctive, irresistible, powerful, filling him with entire faith.

"This unknown thing I will find. What is to be done I will do," he
declared to himself.

He threw the pamphlet on the table, arose from his chair and descended
to the dining-room, where his wife and children were waiting for him. He
rubbed his hands with glee, and his face looked joyous.

"Didst thou discover the trail?" Mme. Bernardet asked very simply, as a
working woman would ask her husband if he had had a good day. The eldest
of the little girls rushed toward him.

"Papa, my dear little papa!"

"My darling!"

The child asked her father in a sweet voice: "Art thou satisfied with
thy crime, papa?"

"We will not talk about that," Bernardet replied. "To table! After
dinner I will develop the pictures which I have taken with my kodak, but
let us amuse ourselves now; it is my fete day; I wish to forget all
about business. Let us dine now and be as happy as possible."

CHAPTER VII.

THE murder of M. Rovere, committed in broad daylight, in a quarter of
Paris filled with life and movement, caused a widespread sensation.
There was so much mystery mixed in the affair. What could be ascertained
about the dead man's life was very dramatically written up by Paul
Rodier in a sketch, and this, republished everywhere and enlarged upon,
soon gave to the crime of the Boulevard de Clichy the interest of a
judicial romance. All that there was of vulgar curiosity in man awoke,
as atavistic bestiality at the smell of blood.

What was this M. Rovere, former Consul to Buenos Ayres or Havana,
amateur collector of objects of virtu, member of the Society of
Bibliophiles, where he had not been seen for a long time? What enemy had
entered his room for the purpose of cutting his throat? Might he not
have been assassinated by some thief who knew that his rooms contained a
collection of works of art? The fete at Montmartre was often in full
blast in front of the house where the murder had been committed, and
among the crowd of ex-prison birds and malefactors who are always
attendant upon foreign kirmesses might not some one of them have
returned and committed the crime? The papers took advantage of the
occasion to moralize upon permitting these fetes to be held in the
outlying boulevards, where vice and crime seemed to spring spontaneously
from the soil.

But no one, not