bled
me prodigiously. I paid no attention to this circumstance, and
had, in fact, completely forgotten it; when, quite lately, Gismondo
told me that he had just seen his former neighbor again, and, what's
more, arm in arm with you, and that you both entered together the
Hotel des Folies. As he insisted again upon that famous resemblance,
I determined to see for myself. I watched, and I stated, _de visa_,
that my old Italian was not quite wrong, and that I had, perhaps,
just found the weapon I was looking for."

His eyes staring, and his mouth gaping, Maxence looked like a man
fallen from the clouds.

"Ah, you did watch!" he said.

M. de Tregars snapped his fingers with a gesture of indifference.

"It is certain," he replied, "that, for a month past, I have been
doing a singular business. But it is not by remaining on my chair,
preaching against the corruption of the age, that I can attain my
object. The end justifies the means. Honest men are very silly,
I think, to allow the rascals to get the better of them under the
sentimental pretext that they cannot condescend to make use of their
weapons."

But an honorable scruple was tormenting Maxence.

"And you think yourself well-informed, sir?" he inquired. "You
know Lucienne?"

"Enough to know that she is not what she seems to be, and what
almost any other would have been in her place; enough to be certain,
that, if she shows herself two or three times a week riding around
the lake, it is not for her pleasure; enough, also, to be persuaded,
that, despite appearances, she is not your mistress, and that, far
from having disturbed your life, and compromised your prospects,
she set you back into the right road, at the moment, perhaps, when
you were about to branch off into the wrong path."

Marius de Tregars was assuming fantastic proportions in the mind of
Maxence.

"How did you manage," he stammered, "thus to find out the truth?"

"With time and money, every thing is possible."

"But you must have had grave reasons to take so much trouble about
Lucienne."

"Very grave ones, indeed."

"You know that she was basely forsaken when quite a child?"

"Perfectly."

"And that she was brought up through charity?"

"By some poor gardeners at Louveciennes: yes, I know all that."

Maxence was trembling with joy. It seemed to him that his most
dazzling hopes were about to be realized. Seizing the hands of
Marius de Tregars,

"Ah, you know Lucienne's fami