“You, monsieur?” he said.  “Already!”

This already was pregnant with suggestiveness, and puzzled Lissac.  The rumor had, in fact, spread throughout the quarter, and probably the porter had helped it along—­that Guy had been arrested for complicity in some political intrigue, though of what nature was unknown.  Nevertheless, the previous evening, the agents of police had come to the apartments in Rue d’Aumale and had searched everything, moved, tried and probed everything.  Evidently they were in quest of papers.

“Papers?” cried Lissac.  “Her letter, parbleu!”

He was no longer in doubt.  The delicate, dreaded hand of Marianne was at the bottom of all that.  She had made some bargain with Monsieur Jouvenet, as between a woman and a debauchee!  The Prefect of Police was not the loser:  Marianne Kayser had the wherewithal to satisfy him.

“The miserable wench!” Lissac repeated as he went up to his apartment.

He rang and his servant appeared, looking as bewildered as the porter.

The apartment was still topsy-turvy.  The valet de chambre had not dared to put the things in order, as if there reigned, amid the scattered packages and the yawning drawers, the majesty of the official seal.

They had examined everything, forced locks and removed packets of letters.

The small Italian cabinet, that contained Marianne’s letter, had had its drawers turned over, like pockets turned inside out.  Marianne’s letter to Lissac, the scrap of paper which the police hunted, without knowing whose will they were obeying, that confession of a crazy mistress to a lover who was smitten to his very bones, was no longer there.

“Ah!  I will see Vaudrey!  I will see him and tell him!” said Lissac aloud.

“Will monsieur breakfast?”

“Yes, as quickly as possible.  Two eggs and tea, I am in a hurry.”

He was anxious to rush off to the ministry.  Was the Chamber sitting to-day?  No.  He would perhaps then find Sulpice at his first call.  The messengers knew him.

He speedily hastened to Place Breda, looking for a carriage.  On the way, he stumbled against a man who came down on the same side, smoking a cigar.

“Oh!  Monsieur de Lissac!”

Guy instinctively stepped back one pace; he recognized Uncle Kayser.  Then, suddenly, his anger, which up to that time he had been able to restrain, burst forth, and in a few words energetic and rapid, he told Simon, who remained bewildered and somewhat pale, as if one had tried to force a quarrel on him, what he thought of Marianne’s infamy.

The uncle said nothing, regretted that he had met Lissac, and contented himself with stammering from time to time: 

“She has done that?—­What! she has done that?—­Ah! the rogue.”

“And what do you say about it, you, Simon Kayser?”

“I?—­What do I say about it?—­Why—­”

Little by little he recovered his sang-froid, looking at matters from the lofty heights of his artist’s philosophy.