“What!” cried la Peyrade, “is that girl my uncle’s daughter?”

“Yes; the girl I wish you to marry is the daughter of your uncle Peyrade,—­for he democratized his name,—­or, if you like it better, she was the daughter of Pere Canquoelle, a name he took from the little estate on which your father lived and starved with eleven children.  You see, in spite of the secrecy your uncle always kept about his family, that I know all about it.  Do you suppose that before selecting you as your cousin’s husband I had not obtained every possible information about you?  And what I have learned need not make you quite so supercilious to the police.  Besides, as the vulgar saying is, the best of your nose is made of it.  Your uncle belonged to the police, and, thanks to that, he became the confidant, I might almost say the friend, of Louis XVIII., who took the greatest pleasure in his companionship.  And you, by nature and by mind, also by the foolish position into which you have got yourself, in short, by your whole being, have gravitated steadily to the conclusion I propose to you, namely, that of succeeding me,—­of succeeding Corentin.  That is the question between us, Monsieur.  Do you really believe now that I have not a grasp or a ‘seizin,’ as you call it, upon you, and that you can manage to escape me for any foolish considerations of bourgeois vanity?”

La Peyrade could not have been at heart so violently opposed to this proposal as he seemed, for the vigorous language of the great master of the police and the species of appropriation which he made of his person brought a smile to the young man’s lips.

Corentin had risen, and was walking up and down the room, speaking, apparently, to himself.

“The police!” he cried; “one may say of it, as Basile said of calumny to Batholo, ‘The police, monsieur! you don’t know what you despise!’ And, after all,” he continued, after a pause, “who are they who despise it?  Imbeciles, who don’t know any better than to insult their protectors.  Suppress the police, and you destroy civilization.  Do the police ask for the respect of such people?  No, they want to inspire them with one sentiment only:  fear, that great lever with which to govern mankind,—­an impure race whose odious instincts God, hell, the executioner, and the gendarmes can scarcely restrain!”

Stopping short before la Peyrade, and looking at him with a disdainful smile, he continued:—­

“So you are one of those ninnies who see in the police nothing more than a horde of spies and informers?  Have you never suspected the statesmen, the diplomats, the Richelieus it produces?  Mercury, monsieur,—­Mercury, the cleverest of the gods of paganism,—­what was he but the police incarnate?  It is true that he was also the god of thieves.  We are better than he, for we don’t allow that junction of forces.”

“And yet,” said la Peyrade, “Vautrin, or, I should say, Jacques Collin, the famous chief of the detective police—­”