us exercises as far as possible out of her
husband's sight.

Du Croisier's adherents, knowing the secret and the plans of the great
commercial power, looked round when the lady of the house disappeared;
but there were still several persons present whose opinions or interests
marked them out as untrustworthy, so they continued to play. About half
past eleven all had gone save intimates: M. Sauvager, M. Camusot, the
examining magistrate, and his wife, M. and Mme. du Ronceret and their
son Fabien, M. and Mme. du Coudrai, and Joseph Blondet, the eldest of an
old judge; ten persons in all.

It is told of Talleyrand that one fatal day, three hours after midnight,
he suddenly interrupted a game of cards in the Duchesse de Luynes' house
by laying down his watch on the table and asking the players whether the
Prince de Conde had any child but the Duc d'Enghien.

"Why do you ask?" returned Mme. de Luynes, "when you know so well that
he has not."

"Because if the Prince has no other son, the House of Conde is now at an
end."

There was a moment's pause, and they finished the game.--President
du Ronceret now did something very similar. Perhaps he had heard the
anecdote; perhaps, in political life, little minds and great minds
are apt to hit upon the same expression. He looked at his watch, and
interrupted the game of boston with:

"At this moment M. le Comte d'Esgrignon is arrested, and that house
which has held its head so high is dishonored forever."

"Then, have you got hold of the boy?" du Coudrai cried gleefully.

Every one in the room, with the exception of the President, the deputy,
and du Croisier, looked startled.

"He has just been arrested in Chesnel's house, where he was hiding,"
said the deputy public prosecutor, with the air of a capable but
unappreciated public servant, who ought by rights to be Minister
of Police. M. Sauvager, the deputy, was a thin, tall young man of
five-and-twenty, with a lengthy olive-hued countenance, black frizzled
hair, and deep-set eyes; the wide, dark rings beneath them were
completed by the wrinkled purple eyelids above. With a nose like the
beak of some bird of prey, a pinched mouth, and cheeks worn lean with
study and hollowed by ambition, he was the very type of a second-rate
personage on the lookout for something to turn up, and ready to do
anything if so he might get on in the world, while keeping within the
limitations of the possible and the forms of law. His pompous expr