"I understand, patron. Where shall I report to you?"

"I will call on you every day. Until I tell you differently, don't step
foot in this house; you might be followed. If anything important should
happen, send a note to your wife, and she will inform me. Go, and be
prudent."

The door closed on Fanferlot as M. Lecoq passed into his bedroom.

In the twinkling of an eye he had divested himself of the appearance of
a police officer. He took off his stiff cravat and gold spectacles, and
removed the close wig from his thick black hair. The official Lecoq had
disappeared, leaving in his place the genuine Lecoq whom nobody knew--a
handsome young man, with a bold, determined manner, and brilliant,
piercing eyes.

But he only remained himself for an instant. Seated before a
dressing-table covered with more cosmetics, paints, perfumes, false
hair, and other unmentionable shams, than are to be found on the
toilet-tables of our modern belles, he began to undo the work of nature,
and make himself a new face.

He worked slowly, handling his brushes with great care. But in an hour
he had accomplished one of his daily masterpieces. When he had finished,
he was no longer Lecoq: he was the large gentleman with red whiskers,
whom Fanferlot had failed to recognize.

"Well," he said, casting a last look in the mirror, "I have forgotten
nothing: I have left nothing to chance. All my plans are fixed; and I
shall make some progress to-day, provided the Squirrel does not waste
time."

But Fanferlot was too happy to waste a minute. He did not run, he flew,
toward the Palais de Justice.

At last he was now able to convince someone that he, Fanferlot, was a
man of wonderful perspicacity.

As to acknowledging that he was about to obtain a triumph with the ideas
of another man, he never thought of it. It is generally in perfect good
faith that the jackdaw struts in the peacock's feathers.

His hopes were not deceived. If the judge was not absolutely and
fully convinced, he admired the ingenuity and shrewdness of the whole
proceeding, and complimented the proud jackdaw upon his brilliancy.

"This decides me," he said, as he dismissed Fanferlot. "I will make out
a favorable report to-day; and it is highly probable that the accused
will be released to-morrow."

He began at once to write out one of these terrible decisions of "Not
proven," which restores liberty, but not honor, to the accused man;
which says that he is not guilty, but d