Du Croisier’s adherents, knowing the secret and the plans of the great commercial power, looked round when the lady of the house disappeared; but there were still several persons present whose opinions or interests marked them out as untrustworthy, so they continued to play.  About half past eleven all had gone save intimates:  M. Sauvager, M. Camusot, the examining magistrate, and his wife, M. and Mme. du Ronceret and their son Fabien, M. and Mme. du Coudrai, and Joseph Blondet, the eldest of an old judge; ten persons in all.

It is told of Talleyrand that one fatal day, three hours after midnight, he suddenly interrupted a game of cards in the Duchesse de Luynes’ house by laying down his watch on the table and asking the players whether the Prince de Conde had any child but the Duc d’Enghien.

“Why do you ask?” returned Mme. de Luynes, “when you know so well that he has not.”

“Because if the Prince has no other son, the House of Conde is now at an end.”

There was a moment’s pause, and they finished the game.—­President du Ronceret now did something very similar.  Perhaps he had heard the anecdote; perhaps, in political life, little minds and great minds are apt to hit upon the same expression.  He looked at his watch, and interrupted the game of boston with: 

“At this moment M. le Comte d’Esgrignon is arrested, and that house which has held its head so high is dishonored forever.”

“Then, have you got hold of the boy?” du Coudrai cried gleefully.

Every one in the room, with the exception of the President, the deputy, and du Croisier, looked startled.

“He has just been arrested in Chesnel’s house, where he was hiding,” said the deputy public prosecutor, with the air of a capable but unappreciated public servant, who ought by rights to be Minister of Police.  M. Sauvager, the deputy, was a thin, tall young man of five-and-twenty, with a lengthy olive-hued countenance, black frizzled hair, and deep-set eyes; the wide, dark rings beneath them were completed by the wrinkled purple eyelids above.  With a nose like the beak of some bird of prey, a pinched mouth, and cheeks worn lean with study and hollowed by ambition, he was the very type of a second-rate personage on the lookout for something to turn up, and ready to do anything if so he might get on in the world, while keeping within the limitations of the possible and the forms of law.  His pompous expression was an admirable indication of the time-serving eloquence to be expected of him.  Chesnel’s successor had discovered the young Count’s hiding place to him, and he took great credit to himself for his penetration.

The news seemed to come as a shock to the examining magistrate, M. Camusot, who had granted the warrant of arrest on Sauvager’s application, with no idea that it was to be executed so promptly.  Camusot was short, fair, and fat already, though he was only thirty years old or thereabouts; he had the flabby, livid look peculiar to officials who live shut up in their private study or in a court of justice; and his little, pale, yellow eyes were full of the suspicion which is often mistaken for shrewdness.