Then to hide his embarrassment and the preoccupation of his mind, he sat down before the editor’s table, took a sheet of the head-lined paper and made himself write a letter.

Presently la Peyrade returned to the table and sitting down, took another sheet and with the feverish rapidity of a man stirred by some emotion he drove his pen over the paper.

From the corner of his eye, Thuillier tried hard to see what la Peyrade was writing, and noticing that his sentences were separated by numbers placed between brackets, he said:—­

“Tiens! are you drawing up a parliamentary law?”

“Yes,” replied la Peyrade, “the law of the vanquished.”

Soon after this, the porter opened the door and introduced Madame Lambert, whom he had found at home, and who arrived looking rather frightened.

“You are Madame Lambert?” asked Thuillier, magisterially.

“Yes, monsieur,” said the woman, in an anxious voice.

After requesting her to be seated and noticing that the porter was still there as if awaiting further orders he said to the man:—­

“That will do; you may go; and don’t let any one disturb us.”

The gravity and the lordly tone assumed by Thuillier only increased Madame Lambert’s uneasiness.  She came expecting to see only la Peyrade, and she found herself received by an unknown man with a haughty manner, while the barrister, who had merely bowed to her, said not a word; moreover, the scene took place in a newspaper office, and it is a well-known fact that to pious persons especially all that relates to the press is infernal and diabolical.

“Well,” said Thuillier to the barrister, “it seems to me that nothing hinders you from explaining to madame why you have sent for her.”

In order to leave no loophole for suspicion in Thuillier’s mind la Peyrade knew that he must put his question bluntly and without the slightest preparation; he therefore said to her “ex abrupto":—­

“We wish to ask you, madame, if it is not true that about two and a half months ago you placed in my hands, subject to interest, the sum, in round numbers, of twenty-five thousand francs.”

Though she felt the eyes of Thuillier and those of la Peyrade upon her, Madame Lambert, under the shock of this question fired at her point-blank, could not restrain a start.

“Heavens!” she exclaimed, “twenty-five thousand francs! and where should I get such a sum as that?”

La Peyrade gave no sign on his face of the vexation he might be supposed to feel.  As for Thuillier, who now looked at him with sorrowful commiseration, he merely said:—­

“You see, my friend!”

“So,” resumed la Peyrade, “you are very certain that you did not place in my hands the sum of twenty-five thousand francs; you declare this, you affirm it?”

“Why, monsieur! did you ever hear of such a sum as that in the pocket of a poor woman like me?  The little that I had, as everybody knows, has gone to eke out the housekeeping of that poor dear gentleman whose servant I have been for more than twenty years.”