was concluded, and devote myself exclusively to the
search after the amorous and mysterious Monsieur.

"I did not state this determination to you, because, possibly, I
might be in error--or, if not in error, at least too sanguine in my
expectations--and it is best to avoid disappointing an honourable
client.

"One thing was clear, that, at the time of the soi-disant Duval's
decease, the beau Monsieur was at Vienna.

"It appeared also tolerably clear that when the lady friend of the
deceased quitted Munich so privately, it was to Vienna she repaired,
and from Vienna comes the letter demanding the certificates of Madame
Duval's death. Pardon me, if I remind you of all these circumstances no
doubt fresh in your recollection. I repeat them in order to justify the
conclusions to which they led me.

"I could not, however, get permission to absent myself from Paris for
the time I might require till the end of last April. I had meanwhile
sought all private means of ascertaining what Frenchmen of rank and
station were in that capital in the autumn of 1849. Among the list of
the very few such Messieurs I fixed upon one as the most likely to be
the mysterious Achille--Achille was, indeed, his nom de bapteme.

"A man of intrigue--a bonnes fortunes--of lavish expenditure withal;
very tenacious of his dignity, and avoiding any petty scandals by
which it might be lowered; just the man who, in some passing affair of
gallantry with a lady of doubtful repute, would never have signed his
titular designation to a letter, and would have kept himself as much
incognito as he could. But this man was dead--had been dead some years.
He had not died at Vienna--never visited that capital for some years
before his death. He was then, and had long been, the ami de la maison
of one of those grandes dames of whose intimacy grands seigneurs are not
ashamed. They parade there the bonnes fortunes they conceal elsewhere.
Monsieur and the grande dame were at Baden when the former died. Now,
Monsieur, a Don Juan of that stamp is pretty sure always to have a
confidential Leporello. If I could find Leporello alive I might learn
the secrets not to be extracted from a Don Juan defunct. I ascertained,
in truth, both at Vienna, to which I first repaired in order to verify
the renseignements I had obtained at Paris, and at Baden, to which I
then bent my way, that this brilliant noble had a favourite valet who
had lived with him from his youth--an Italian, who