you sure of it, pere Fromenteau?" asked Gaillard. "This it the
eleventh time you've caught him at night and missed him in the morning."

"How could I help it? I never saw such a debtor! he's a locomotive; goes
to sleep in Paris and wakes up in the Seine-et-Oise. A safety lock I
call him." Seeing a smile on Gaillard's face he added: "That's a
saying in our business. Pinch a man, means arrest him, lock him up.
The criminal police have another term. Vidoeq said to his man, 'You are
served'; that's funnier, for it means the guillotine."

A nudge from Bixiou made Gazonal all eyes and ears.

"Does monsieur grease my paws?" asked Fromenteau of Gaillard, in a
threatening but cool tone.

"'A question that of fifty centimes'" (Les Saltimbauques), replied the
editor, taking out five francs and offering them to Fromenteau.

"And the rapscallions?" said the man.

"What rapscallions?" asked Gaillard.

"Those I employ," replied Fromenteau calmly.

"Is there a lower depth still?" asked Bixiou.

"Yes, monsieur," said the spy. "Some people give us information without
knowing they do so, and without getting paid for it. I put fools and
ninnies below rapscallions."

"They are often original, and witty, your rapscallions!" said Leon.

"Do you belong to the police?" asked Gazonal, eying with uneasy
curiosity the hard, impassible little man, who was dressed like the
third clerk in a sheriff's office.

"Which police do you mean?" asked Fromenteau.

"There are several?"

"As many as five," replied the man. "Criminal, the head of which was
Vidoeq; secret police, which keeps an eye on the other police, the head
of it being always unknown; political police,--that's Fouche's. Then
there's the police of Foreign Affairs, and finally, the palace police
(of the Emperor, Louis XVIII., etc.), always squabbling with that of the
quai Malaquais. It came to an end under Monsieur Decazes. I belonged to
the police of Louis XVIII.; I'd been in it since 1793, with that poor
Contenson."

The four gentlemen looked at each other with one thought: "How many
heads he must have brought to the scaffold!"

"Now-a-days, they are trying to get on without us. Folly!" continued the
little man, who began to seem terrible. "Since 1830 they want honest men
at the prefecture! I resigned, and I've made myself a small vocation by
arresting for debt."

"He is the right arm of the commercial police," said Gaillard in
Bixiou's ear, "but you can never find out w