conjectures, instead of going to bed. For they were
wonderfully puzzled by all those events that succeeded each other,
and anxious about all these goings and comings.

"I am going home," the commissary said to them; "but, before that,
listen to my instructions. You will allow no one, you understand,
--no one who is not known to you, to go up to Mlle. Lucienne's
room. And remember that I will admit of no excuse, and that you
must not come and tell me afterwards, 'It isn't our fault, we can't
see everybody that comes in,' and all that sort of nonsense."

He was speaking in that harsh and imperious tone of which
police-agents have the secret, when they are addressing people who
have, by their conduct, placed themselves under their dependence.

"We are going to close our front-door," replied the estimable
hotel-keepers. "We will comply strictly with your orders."

"I trust so; because, if you should disobey me, I should hear it,
and the result would be a serious trouble to you. Besides your
hotel being unmercifully closed up, you would find yourselves
implicated in a very bad piece of business."

The most ardent curiosity could be read in Mme. Fortin's little eyes.

"I understood at once," she began, "that something extraordinary
was going on."

But the commissary interrupted her,

"I have not done yet. It may be that to-night or to-morrow some
one will call and inquire how Mlle. Lucienne is."

"And then?"

"You will answer that she is as bad as possible; and that she has
neither spoken a word, nor recovered her senses, since the accident;
and that she will certainly not live through the day."

The effort which Mme. Fortin made to remain silent gave, better than
any thing else, an idea of the terror with which the commissary
inspired her.

"That is not all," he went on. "As soon as the person in question
has started off, you will follow him, without affectation, as far
as the street-door, and you will point him out with your finger,
here, like that, to one of my agents, who will happen to be on the
Boulevard."

"And suppose he should not be there?"

"He shall be there. You can make yourself easy on that score."

The looks of distress which the honorable hotel-keepers were
exchanging did not announce a very tranquil conscience.

"In other words, here we are under surveillance," said M. Fortin
with a groan. "What have we done to be thus mistrusted?"

To reply to him would have been a task more