s bought, for a mere song, by a delegate of the
Commune, the very man who had arrested d'Ernemont, one Citizen Broquet.
Citizen Broquet shut himself up in the house, barricaded the doors,
fortified the walls and, when Charles d'Ernemont was at last set free
and appeared outside, received him by firing a musket at him. Charles
instituted one law-suit after another, lost them all and then proceeded
to offer large sums of money. But Citizen Broquet proved intractable. He
had bought the house and he stuck to the house; and he would have stuck
to it until his death, if Charles had not obtained the support of
Bonaparte. Citizen Broquet cleared out on the 12th of February, 1803;
but Charles d'Ernemont's joy was so great and his brain, no doubt, had
been so violently unhinged by all that he had gone through, that, on
reaching the threshold of the house of which he had at last recovered
the ownership, even before opening the door he began to dance and sing
in the street. He had gone clean off his head."

"By Jove!" said Lupin. "And what became of him?"

"His mother and his sister Pauline, who had ended by marrying a cousin
of the same name at Geneva, were both dead. The old servant-woman took
care of him and they lived together in the Passy house. Years passed
without any notable event; but, suddenly, in 1812, an unexpected
incident happened. The old servant made a series of strange revelations
on her death-bed, in the presence of two witnesses whom she sent for.
She declared that the farmer-general had carried to his house at Passy a
number of bags filled with gold and silver and that those bags had
disappeared a few days before the arrest. According to earlier
confidences made by Charles d'Ernemont, who had them from his father,
the treasures were hidden in the garden, between the rotunda, the
sun-dial and the well. In proof of her statement, she produced three
pictures, or rather, for they were not yet framed, three canvases, which
the farmer-general had painted during his captivity and which he had
succeeded in conveying to her, with instructions to hand them to his
wife, his son and his daughter. Tempted by the lure of wealth, Charles
and the old servant had kept silence. Then came the law-suits, the
recovery of the house, Charles's madness, the servant's own useless
searches; and the treasures were still there."

"And they are there now," chuckled Lupin.

"And they will be there always," exclaimed Maitre Valandier. "Unl