had to assume that hideous masquerade. To think that I once took
six months' lessons from a music-teacher merely to fit myself for that
character! A wandering musician, you see, can go anywhere, and nobody is
surprised; he goes about the streets, or he travels along the high-road;
he enters into yards, and slips into houses; he asks alms: and in so
doing, he accosts everybody, speaks to them, follows them. And as to my
precious dialect, you must know I have been down here once for half a
year, hunting up counterfeiters; and, if you don't catch a provincial
accent in six months, you don't deserve belonging to the police. And
I do belong to it, to the great distress of my wife, and to my own
disgust."

"If your ambition is really what you say, my dear, Goudar," said M.
Folgat, interrupting him, "you may be able to leave your profession very
soon--if you succeed in saving M. de Boiscoran."

"He would give me his house in Vine Street?"

"With all his heart!"

The detective looked up, and repeated slowly,--

"The house in Vine Street, the paradise of this world. An immense
garden, a soil of marvellous beauty. And what an exposure! There are
walls there on which I could raise finer peaches than they have at
Montreuil, and richer Chasselas than those of Fontainebleau!"

"Did you find any thing there?" asked M. Folgat.

Goudar, thus recalled to business, looked angry again.

"Nothing at all," he replied. "Nor did I learn any thing from the
tradesmen. I am no further advanced than I was the first day."

"Let us hope you will have more luck here."

"I hope so; but I need your assistance to commence operations. I must
see Dr. Seignebos, and Mechinet the clerk. Ask them to meet me at the
place I shall assign in a note which I will send them."

"I will tell them."

"Now, if you want my _incognito_ to be respected, you must get me a
permit from the mayor, for Goudar, street-musician. I keep my name,
because here nobody knows me. But I must have the permit this evening.
Wherever I might present myself, asking for a bed, they would call for
my papers."

"Wait here for a quarter of an hour, there is a bench," said M. Folgat,
"and I'll go at once to the mayor."

A quarter of an hour later, Goudar had his permit in his pocket,
and went to take lodgings at the Red Lamb, the worst tavern in all
Sauveterre.

When a painful and inevitable duty is to be performed, the true
character of a man is apt to appear in its true ligh