room, "do you
still think you see a woman's hand in this affair?"

"More than ever; and a pious woman too, and a woman who has two
prayer-books, since she could cut up one to write to you."

"And you hope to find the mutilated book?"

"I do, thanks to the opportunity I have of making an immediate search;
which I will set about at once."

Saying this, he sat down, and rapidly scratched off a few lines on a
slip of paper, which he folded up, and put in his vest-pocket.

"Are you ready to go to M. Fauvel's? Yes? Come on, then; we have
certainly earned our breakfast to-day."

VIII

When Raoul de Lagors spoke of M. Fauvel's extraordinary dejection, he
had not exaggerated.

Since the fatal day when, upon his denunciation, his cashier had been
arrested, the banker, this active, energetic man of business, had been
a prey to the most gloomy melancholy, and absolutely refused to take any
interest in his affairs, seldom entering the banking-house.

He, who had always been so domestic, never came near his family except
at meals, when he would swallow a few mouthfuls, and hastily leave the
room.

Shut up in his study, he would deny himself to visitors. His anxious
countenance, his indifference to everybody and everything, his constant
reveries and fits of abstraction, betrayed the preoccupation of some
fixed idea, or the tyrannical empire of some hidden sorrow.

The day of Prosper's release, about three o'clock, M. Fauvel was, as
usual, seated in his study, with his elbows resting on the table, and
his face buried in his hands, when his office-boy rushed in, and with a
frightened look said:

"Monsieur, the former cashier, M. Bertomy, is here with one of his
relatives; he says he must see you on business."

The banker at these words started up as if he had been shot.

"Prosper!" he cried in a voice choked by anger, "what! does he dare--"

Then remembering that he ought to control himself before his servant, he
waited a few moments, and then said, in a tone of forced calmness:

"Ask them to walk in."

If M. Verduret had counted upon witnessing a strange and affecting
sight, he was not disappointed.

Nothing could be more terrible than the attitude of these two men as
they stood confronting each other. The banker's face was almost purple
with suppressed anger, and he looked as if about to be struck by
apoplexy. Prosper was as pale and motionless as a corpse.

Silent and immovable, they stood glaring at ea