ean?" rejoined the advocate in a hollow tone,--"what I mean?"

Then rising from his arm-chair, he took several strides about the room,
and, returning to his place near the old fellow, said,--

"Because, M. Tabaret, Madame Gerdy is not my mother!"

This sentence fell like a heavy blow on the head of the amateur
detective.

"Oh!" he said, in the tone one assumes when rejecting an absurd
proposition, "do you really know what you are saying, Noel? Is it
credible? Is it probable?"

"It is improbable," replied Noel with a peculiar emphasis which was
habitual to him: "it is incredible, if you will; but yet it is true.
That is to say, for thirty-three years, ever since my birth, this woman
has played a most marvellous and unworthy comedy, to ennoble and enrich
her son,--for she has a son,--at my expense!"

"My friend," commenced old Tabaret, who in the background of the picture
presented by this singular revelation saw again the phantom of the
murdered Widow Lerouge.

But Noel heard not, and seemed hardly in a state to hear. The young man,
usually so cold, so self-contained, could no longer control his anger.
At the sound of his own voice, he became more and more animated, as a
good horse might at the jingling of his harness.

"Was ever man," continued he, "more cruelly deceived, more miserably
duped, than I have been! I, who loved this woman, who knew not how to
show my affection for her, who, for her sake, sacrificed my youth! How
she must have laughed at me! Her infamy dates from the moment when for
the first time she took me on her knees; and, until these few days past,
she has sustained without faltering her execrable role. Her love for me
was nothing but hypocrisy! her devotion, falsehood! her caresses,
lies! And I adored her! Ah! why can I not take back all the embraces I
bestowed on her in exchange for her Judas kisses? And for what was all
this heroism of deception, this caution, this duplicity? To betray me
more securely, to despoil me, to rob me, to give to her bastard all
that lawfully appertained to me; my name, a noble name, my fortune, a
princely inheritance!"

"We are getting near it!" thought old Tabaret, who was fast relapsing
into the colleague of M. Gevrol; then aloud he said, "This is very
serious, all that you have been saying, my dear Noel, terribly serious.
We must believe Madame Gerdy possessed of an amount of audacity and
ability rarely to be met with in a woman. She must have been assisted,