Jean in the
Foundling Hospital at Vendome, while the infant that was baptized with
the grandiloquent names of Anne Rene, Gontran de Duepair, Marquis de
Champdoce, was the bastard child of a girl living near Montroire, who
was known in the neighborhood as "The Witch."

CHAPTER XIX.

MASCARIN SPEAKS.

This was the conclusion of the manuscript handed by Mascarin to Paul
Violaine, and the young man laid down the roll of paper with the remark,
"And that is all."

He had consumed six hours in reading this sad account of the follies and
crimes of the owners of illustrious names.

Mascarin had listened with the complacency of an author who hears his
own work read aloud to him, but all the while he was keenly watching him
beneath his spectacles and the faces of his companions. The effect that
was produced was immense, and exactly what he had anticipated. Paul,
Hortebise, and Catenac gazed upon each other with faces in which
astonishment at the strange recital, and then at the power of the man
who had collected these facts together, were mingled, and Catenac was
the first who spoke. The sound of his own voice seemed gradually to
dispel the vague sense of apprehension that hung about the office.

"Aha!" cried he, "I always said that our old friend Mascarin would
make his mark in literature. As soon as his pen touches the paper the
business man vanishes; we have no longer a collection of dry facts and
proofs, but the stirring pages of a sensational novel."

"Do you really consider that as a mere romance?" asked Hortebise.

"It reads like one certainly; you must allow that."

"Catenac," remarked Mascarin in his bitterly sarcastic tone, "is best
able to pronounce upon the truth or falsehood of this narrative, as he
is the professional adviser of this same Duke de Champdoce, the very
Norbert whose life has just been read to you."

"I do not deny that there is some slight foundation to it," returned the
lawyer.

"Then what is it that you do deny?"

"Nothing, nothing; I merely objected, more in jest than otherwise, to
the sentimental manner in which you have set forward your case."

"Catenac," remarked Mascarin, addressing the others, "has received many
confidential communications from his noble client, which he has not
thought fit to communicate to us; and though he fancied that we were
drifting into quicksands and among breakers, he displayed no signal of
warning to save us from our danger, hoping, like a true frie