g in them. Although I know
almost everyone in Neuilly I can think of nobody who is likely to have
any information, unless perhaps it were Bache--"

"You know Bache, the municipal councillor?" interrupted Guillaume.

"Yes, we have both had to busy ourselves with charitable work in the
neighbourhood."

"Well, Bache is an old friend of mine, and I know no safer man. Pray go
to him and bring him back with you."

A quarter of an hour later Pierre returned with Bache, who resided in a
neighbouring street. And it was not only Bache whom he brought with him,
for, much to his surprise, he had found Janzen at Bache's house. As
Guillaume had suspected, Janzen, while dining at the Princess de Harn's,
had heard of the crime, and had consequently refrained from returning to
his little lodging in the Rue des Martyrs, where the police might well
have set a trap for him. His connections were known, and he was aware
that he was watched and was liable at any moment to arrest or expulsion
as a foreign Anarchist. And so he had thought it prudent to solicit a few
days' hospitality of Bache, a very upright and obliging man, to whom he
entrusted himself without fear. He would never have remained with
Rosemonde, that adorable lunatic who for a month past had been exhibiting
him as her lover, and whose useless and dangerous extravagance of conduct
he fully realised.

Guillaume was so delighted on seeing Bache and Janzen that he wished to
sit up in bed again. But Pierre bade him remain quiet, rest his head on
the pillows, and speak as little as possible. Then, while Janzen stood
near, erect and silent, Bache took a chair and sat down by the bedside
with many expressions of friendly interest. He was a stout man of sixty,
with a broad, full face, a large white beard and long white hair. His
little, gentle eyes had a dim, dreamy expression, while a pleasant,
hopeful smile played round his thick lips. His father, a fervent St.
Simonian, had brought him up in the doctrines of that belief. While
retaining due respect for it, however, his personal inclinations towards
orderliness and religion had led him to espouse the ideas of Fourier, in
such wise that one found in him a succession and an abridgment, so to
say, of two doctrines. Moreover, when he was about thirty, he had busied
himself with spiritualism. Possessed of a comfortable little fortune, his
only adventure in life had been his connection with the Paris Commune of
1871. How or why he had