it is."

"Papa," interrupted the eldest of the three little girls, "canst thou
take us to see the trial, when he shall be sworn?"

"That depends! It is not easy! I will try--I will ask. If thou wilt work
hard--Oh, dame!" said Bernardet, "that will be a drama!"

"I will work hard."

At dessert, after he had taken his coffee, he allowed his three little
girls to dip lumps of sugar into his saucer. He threw himself into his
easy chair; he gave a sigh of satisfaction, like a man whose daily,
wearisome tasks are behind him, and who is catching a moment's repose.

"Ah!" he said, opening a paper which his wife had placed on a table near
him, together with a little glass of cordial sent to them by some
cousins in Burgundy; "I am going to see what has happened and what those
good journalists have invented about the affair in the Boulevard de
Clichy. It is true, it is a steeplechase between the reporters and us.
Sometimes they win the race in the mornings. At other times, when they
know nothing--ah! Then they invent, they embroider their histories!"

A petroleum lamp lighted the paper which Bernardet unfolded and began to
read.

"Let us see what _Lutece_ says."

He suddenly remembered what Paul Rodier had said to him. "Read my
journal!" This woman in black, found in the province, did she really
exist? Had the novelist written a romance in order to follow the example
of his friend? He looked over the paper to see if Paul Rodier had
collaborated, as his friend had. Bernardet skipped over the headlines
and glanced at the theatrical news. "Politics--they are all the same to
me--Ministerial crisis--nothing new about that. That could as well be
published in yesterday's paper as in to-day's! 'The Crime of the
Boulevard de Clichy'--ah! Good! Very good! We shall see." And he began
to read. Had Paul Rodier invented all the information to which he had
treated the public? What was certain was that the police officer frowned
and now gave strict attention to what he was reading, as if weighing the
reporter's words.

Rodier had republished the biography of the ex-Consul. M. Rovere had
been mixed, in South America, in violent dramas. He was a romantic
person, about whom more than one adventure in Buenos Ayres was known.
The reporter had gained his information from an Argentine journal, the
_Prensa_, established in Paris, and whose editor, in South America, had
visited, intimately, the French Consul. The appearance of a woman in
black,