as soon as I mentioned it she looked rather
confused, and cried out: 'I know him quite well.' So you see, sir, all
you have now is to settle a day for the marriage. Come on; she expects
you."

Toto was right. The late domestic of the Duke de Champdoce was playing
cards; but as soon as she caught sight of Toto and his pretended uncle,
in spite of her holding an excellent hand, she threw up her cards, and
received him with the utmost civility. Toto looked on with delight.
Never had he seen the old rascal (as he inwardly called him in his
heart) so polite, agreeable, and talkative. It was easy to see that
Caroline Schimmel was yielding to his fascinations, for she had never
had such extravagant compliments whispered in her ear in so persuasive a
tone. But Tantaine did not confine his attentions to wine only: he first
ordered a bowl of punch, and then followed that up by a bottle of the
best brandy. All the old man's lost youth seemed to have come back
to him: he sang, he drank, and he danced. Toto watched them in utter
surprise, as the old man whirled the clumsy figure of the woman round
the room.

And he was rewarded for this tremendous exertion, for by ten o'clock she
had consented, and Caroline left the Grand Turk on the arm of her future
husband, having promised to take supper with him.

Next morning, when the scavengers came down from Montmartre to ply their
matutinal avocations, they found the body of a woman lying on her face
on the pavement. They raised her up and carried her to an hospital.
She was not dead, as had been at first supposed; and when the unhappy
creature came to her senses, she said that her name was Caroline
Schimmel, that she had been to supper at a restaurant with her
betrothed, and that from that instant she remembered nothing. At her
request, the surgeon had her conveyed to her home in the Rue Mercadet.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE LAST LINK.

For some days M. Mascarin had not shown himself at the office, and
Beaumarchef was terribly harassed with inquiries regarding his absent
master. Mascarin, on the day after the evening on which Tantaine had
met Caroline Schimmel at the Grand Turk, was carefully shut up in
his private room; his face and eyes were red and inflamed, and he
occasionally sipped a glass of some cooling beverage which stood before
him, and his compressed lips and corrugated brow showed how deeply he
was meditating. Suddenly the door opened, and Dr. Hortebise entered the
room.