name of General
Quesnel, Villefort trembled.

"Everything points to the conclusion, sire," said the minister of
police, "that death was not the result of suicide, as we first believed,
but of assassination. General Quesnel, it appears, had just left a
Bonapartist club when he disappeared. An unknown person had been
with him that morning, and made an appointment with him in the Rue
Saint-Jacques; unfortunately, the general's valet, who was dressing
his hair at the moment when the stranger entered, heard the street
mentioned, but did not catch the number." As the police minister related
this to the king, Villefort, who looked as if his very life hung on the
speaker's lips, turned alternately red and pale. The king looked towards
him.

"Do you not think with me, M. de Villefort, that General Quesnel, whom
they believed attached to the usurper, but who was really entirely
devoted to me, has perished the victim of a Bonapartist ambush?"

"It is probable, sire," replied Villefort. "But is this all that is
known?"

"They are on the track of the man who appointed the meeting with him."

"On his track?" said Villefort.

"Yes, the servant has given his description. He is a man of from fifty
to fifty-two years of age, dark, with black eyes covered with shaggy
eyebrows, and a thick mustache. He was dressed in a blue frock-coat,
buttoned up to the chin, and wore at his button-hole the rosette of an
officer of the Legion of Honor. Yesterday a person exactly corresponding
with this description was followed, but he was lost sight of at the
corner of the Rue de la Jussienne and the Rue Coq-Heron." Villefort
leaned on the back of an arm-chair, for as the minister of police went
on speaking he felt his legs bend under him; but when he learned that
the unknown had escaped the vigilance of the agent who followed him, he
breathed again.

"Continue to seek for this man, sir," said the king to the minister of
police; "for if, as I am all but convinced, General Quesnel, who
would have been so useful to us at this moment, has been murdered, his
assassins, Bonapartists or not, shall be cruelly punished." It required
all Villefort's coolness not to betray the terror with which this
declaration of the king inspired him.

"How strange," continued the king, with some asperity; "the police think
that they have disposed of the whole matter when they say, 'A murder has
been committed,' and especially so when they can add, 'And we are on the