Bordeaux to Paris;
Derville begged Corentin to allow him to take it, urging a press of
business; but in his soul he was distrustful of his traveling companion,
whose diplomatic dexterity and coolness struck him as being the result
of practice. Corentin remained three days longer at Mansle, unable to
get away; he was obliged to secure a place in the Paris coach by writing
to Bordeaux, and did not get back till nine days after leaving home.

Peyrade, meanwhile, had called every morning, either at Passy or in
Paris, to inquire whether Corentin had returned. On the eighth day he
left at each house a note, written in their peculiar cipher, to explain
to his friend what death hung over him, and to tell him of Lydie's
abduction and the horrible end to which his enemies had devoted them.
Peyrade, bereft of Corentin, but seconded by Contenson, still kept up
his disguise as a nabob. Even though his invisible foes had discovered
him, he very wisely reflected that he might glean some light on the
matter by remaining on the field of the contest.

Contenson had brought all his experience into play in his search for
Lydie, and hoped to discover in what house she was hidden; but as the
days went by, the impossibility, absolutely demonstrated, of tracing the
slightest clue, added, hour by hour, to Peyrade's despair. The old
spy had a sort of guard about him of twelve or fifteen of the most
experienced detectives. They watched the neighborhood of the Rue des
Moineaux and the Rue Taitbout--where he lived, as a nabob, with Madame
du Val-Noble. During the last three days of the term granted by Asie to
reinstate Lucien on his old footing in the Hotel de Grandlieu, Contenson
never left the veteran of the old general police office. And the poetic
terror shed throughout the forests of America by the arts of inimical
and warring tribes, of which Cooper made such good use in his
novels, was here associated with the petty details of Paris life. The
foot-passengers, the shops, the hackney cabs, a figure standing at a
window,--everything had to the human ciphers to whom old Peyrade had
intrusted his safety the thrilling interest which attaches in Cooper's
romances to a beaver-village, a rock, a bison-robe, a floating canoe, a
weed straggling over the water.

"If the Spaniard has gone away, you have nothing to fear," said
Contenson to Peyrade, remarking on the perfect peace they lived in.

"But if he is not gone?" observed Peyrade.

"He took one