Canquoelle--he was called so in the house--lived
on in the Rue des Moineaux, on a fourth floor, you may depend on it
he had found some peculiarity in the arrangement of the premises which
favored the practice of his terrible profession.

The house, standing at the corner of the Rue Saint-Roch, had no
neighbors on one side; and as the staircase up the middle divided it
into two, there were on each floor two perfectly isolated rooms. Those
two rooms looked out on the Rue Saint-Roch. There were garret rooms
above the fourth floor, one of them a kitchen, and the other a bedroom
for Pere Canquoelle's only servant, a Fleming named Katt, formerly
Lydie's wet-nurse. Old Canquoelle had taken one of the outside rooms
for his bedroom, and the other for his study. The study ended at the
party-wall, a very thick one. The window opening on the Rue des Moineaux
looked on a blank wall at the opposite corner. As this study was divided
from the stairs by the whole width of Peyrade's bedroom, the friends
feared no eye, no ear, as they talked business in this study made on
purpose for his detestable trade.

Peyrade, as a further precaution, had furnished Katt's room with a thick
straw bed, a felt carpet, and a very heavy rug, under the pretext
of making his child's nurse comfortable. He had also stopped up the
chimney, warming his room by a stove, with a pipe through the wall
to the Rue Saint-Roch. Finally, he laid several rugs on his floor to
prevent the slightest sound being heard by the neighbors beneath. An
expert himself in the tricks of spies, he sounded the outer wall, the
ceiling, and the floor once a week, examining them as if he were in
search of noxious insects. It was the security of this room from
all witnesses or listeners that had made Corentin select it as his
council-chamber when he did not hold a meeting in his own room.

Where Corentin lived was known to no one but the Chief of the Superior
Police and to Peyrade; he received there such personages as the Ministry
or the King selected to conduct very serious cases; but no agent or
subordinate ever went there, and he plotted everything connected with
their business at Peyrade's. In this unpretentious room schemes were
matured, and resolutions passed, which would have furnished strange
records and curious dramas if only walls could talk. Between 1816 and
1826 the highest interests were discussed there. There first germinated
the events which grew to weigh on France. There