business if he had not become suddenly
interested in him. In his quality of Judge he had come to know
Bernardet's history and his exploits in the service. No more capable
man, in his line, could be found. He was perfectly and utterly devoted
to his profession. Some strange tales were told of his methods. It was
he who once passed an entire night on a bench, pretending intoxication,
in order to gain sufficient information to enable him to arrest a
murderer in the morning in a wretched hovel at La Vilette--a murderer
armed to the teeth. It was Bernardet who, without arms--as all those
agents--caught the famous bandit, the noted Taureau de la Glaciere, a
foreign Hercules, who had strangled his mistress. Bernardet arrested him
by holding to his temple the cold neck of a bottle and saying, "Hands up
or I fire!" Now what the bandit took for the cold muzzle of a pistol was
a vial containing some medicine which Bernardet had purchased of a
pharmacist for his liver.

Deeds of valor against thieves, malefactors and insurrectionists
abounded in Bernardet's life; and M. Ginory had just discovered in this
man, whom he believed simply endowed with the activity and keenness of a
hunting dog, an intelligence singularly watchful, deep and complicated.
Bernardet, who had nothing more to do until the body should be taken to
the Morgue, left the house directly after the Magistrates.

"Where are you going?" asked Paul Rodier, the reporter.

"Home. A few steps from here."

"May I go along with you?" asked the journalist.

"To find an occasion to make me speak? But I know nothing! I suspect
nothing; I shall say nothing!"

"Do you believe that it is the work of a thief, or revenge?"

"I am certain that it was no thief. Nothing in the apartment was
touched. As for the rest, who knows?"

"M. Bernardet," laughingly said the reporter, as he walked along by the
officer's side, "you do not wish to speak."

"What good will that do?" Bernardet replied, also laughingly; "it will
not prevent you from publishing an interview."

"You think so. _Au revoir!_ I must hurry and make my copy. And you?"

"I? A photograph."

They separated, and Bernardet entered his house. His daughters had
grieved over his sudden departure on Sunday on his fete day. They met
him with joyous shouts when he appeared, and threw themselves upon him.
"Papa! Here is papa!"

Mme. Bernardet was also happy. They could go then to the garden and
finish the picture. But the