man, and without her equal in taking care of the sick.

With an anxious and beseeching look, Maxence was consulting M. de
Tregars. In his eyes could be read the proposition that was burning
upon his lips,

"Shall I not go for Gilberte?"

But that proposition he had no time to express. Though they had
been speaking very low, Mlle. Lucienne had heard.

"I have a friend," she said, "who would certainly be willing to sit
up with me."

They all went up to her.

"What friend," inquired the commissary of police.

"You know her very well, sir. It is that poor girl who had taken
me home with her at Batignolles when I left the hospital, who came
to my assistance during the Commune, and whom you helped to get
out of the Versailles prisons."

"Do you know what has become of her?"

"Only since yesterday, when I received a letter from her, a very
friendly letter. She writes that she has found money to set up a
dressmaking establishment, and that she is relying upon me to be
her forewoman. She is going to open in the Rue St. Lazare; but,
in the mean time, she is stopping in the Rue du Cirque."

M. de Tregars and Maxence had started slightly.

"What is your friend's name?" they inquired at once.

Not being aware of the particulars of the two young men's visit to
the Rue du Cirque, the commissary of police could not understand
the cause of their agitation.

"I think," he said, "that it would hardly be proper now to send for
that girl."

"It is to her alone, on the contrary, that we must resort,"
interrupted M. de Tregars.

And, as he had good reasons to mistrust Mme. Fortin, he took the
commissary outside the room, on the landing; and there, in a few
words, he explained to him that this Zelie was precisely the same
woman whom they had found in the Rue du Cirque, in that sumptuous
mansion where Vincent Favoral, under the simple name of Vincent, had
been living, according to the neighbors, in such a princely style.

The commissary of police was astounded. Why had he not known all
this sooner? Better late than never, however.

"Ah! you are right, M. le Marquis, a hundred times right!" he
declared. "This girl must evidently know Vincent Favoral's secret,
the key of the enigma that we are vainly trying to solve. What
she would not tell to you, a stranger, she will tell to Lucienne,
her friend."

Maxence offered to go himself for Zelie Cadelle.

"No," answered Marius. "If she should happen to know you, she