“I know of no harm,” I interposed hastily.  “I should always have thought Kraaniff hard to swallow as a mere matter of taste.  I can but recollect, Father Joliet,” I went on more seriously, “that the last time I met you you begged me not to talk of Francine if I would not break your heart.  I have to add to this the news brought me from Heidelberg, that this Kraaniff was a serpent who had fascinated some young girl for an approaching meal.—­How dare you, Charles,” I cried suddenly, recalled to the consciousness of his presence by this souvenir of his oratory, “stand here staring?  Show the young man out directly, and pay him.”

I will not answer for Charles’s having got much farther away than the door.  Joliet continued:  “But his aunt knows him now for what he is.  Kraaniff, say you?  I call him Kranich, though he had better change his baptismal record than disgrace one of the best names in Brussels.”

[Illustration:  The catechism.]

“Frau Kranich, then, my old friend, is really his aunt?”

“Madame Kranich, whom I have known in your parlor, is really Francine’s godmother.  Did you never know of all her secret kindness?  That rigid lady would commit a perjury to deny one of her own good actions.  Young Kranich has written her a letter confessing his lies.  Don’t you know?  The very same day when you were determined to fight him in a duel—­”

“Certainly, certainly,” I said, a little confused.  “We will change the subject and leave my ferocity alone.  Let us understand one another.  In regard to Fortnoye’s marriage, was there not some talk of a Madame Ashburleigh?”

“I believe you.  Madame Ashburleigh is the very key of the manoeuvre.  Madame Ashburleigh—­don’t you perceive?—­lost a child.”

“For that matter, she has lost four.  I know the lady confidentially, and she told me their histories and present address.  Lucia lies in Glasgow, Hannibal at Nice, and Waterloo sleeps somewhere hereabout, as well as another nameless little dear.”

“She is a good woman.  She has collected all her proofs, and has come hither with them voluntarily—­has perhaps already arrived.  Brussels, where two of her marmots rest, is one of her most frequent stations.  That censorious Madame Kranich made a scene, but she had to yield to conviction.”

“A censorious Madame Kranich!  Is the young duelist married?”

“What?  No, no!  It is Francine’s guardian I speak of.  Of late years she has become a sort of Puritan abbess, seeking the Protestant society which abounds in Belgium, and lamenting her husband, whom they say she used to drug with opium.”

“Then is she not Kranich’s aunt?”

“Oh yes, an aunt by marriage; but he is not her nephew:  I will die before I call him so.”

“Listen,” said I, “Father Joliet.  You are as full of information as an oracle, but you are not coherent.  This month past I have been hunting down a chimaera, a hydra with a dozen heads:  each head shows me by turn the portrait of Fortnoye, or Francine, or yourself, or Kranich, or Mrs. Ashburleigh.  Ever since Noisy I have been meandering through the folds of a mystery.  My head is turning with it.  If you want to save me from distraction, sit down in this chair and answer me a long catechism, without saying a word but in reply to my questions.”