was staying at Geneva with their daughter Pauline, shut up his
mansion in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, dismissed his servants and, with
his son Charles, came and took up his abode in his pleasure-house at
Passy, where he was known to nobody except an old and devoted
serving-woman. He remained there in hiding for three years and he had
every reason to hope that his retreat would not be discovered, when, one
day, after luncheon, as he was having a nap, the old servant burst into
his room. She had seen, at the end of the street, a patrol of armed men
who seemed to be making for the house. Louis d'Ernemont got ready
quickly and, at the moment when the men were knocking at the front door,
disappeared through the door that led to the garden, shouting to his
son, in a scared voice, to keep them talking, if only for five minutes.
He may have intended to escape and found the outlets through the garden
watched. In any case, he returned in six or seven minutes, replied very
calmly to the questions put to him and raised no difficulty about
accompanying the men. His son Charles, although only eighteen years of
age, was arrested also."

"When did this happen?" asked Lupin.

"It happened on the 26th day of Germinal, Year II, that is to say, on
the...."

Maitre Valandier stopped, with his eyes fixed on a calendar that hung on
the wall, and exclaimed:

"Why, it was on this very day! This is the 15th of April, the
anniversary of the farmer-general's arrest."

"What an odd coincidence!" said Lupin. "And considering the period at
which it took place, the arrest, no doubt, had serious consequences?"

"Oh, most serious!" said the notary, laughing. "Three months later, at
the beginning of Thermidor, the farmer-general mounted the scaffold. His
son Charles was forgotten in prison and their property was confiscated."

"The property was immense, I suppose?" said Lupin.

"Well, there you are! That's just where the thing becomes complicated.
The property, which was, in fact, immense, could never be traced. It was
discovered that the Faubourg Saint-Germain mansion had been sold, before
the Revolution, to an Englishman, together with all the country-seats
and estates and all the jewels, securities and collections belonging to
the farmer-general. The Convention instituted minute inquiries, as did
the Directory afterward. But the inquiries led to no result."

"There remained, at any rate, the Passy house," said Lupin.

"The house at Passy wa