Madame Jules.  He was perpetually absorbed in a sober examination into the means he ought to employ to triumph in this mysterious struggle with these mysterious persons.  His secret passion for that woman grew by reason of all these obstacles.  Madame Jules was ever there, erect, in the midst of his thoughts, in the centre of his heart, more seductive by her presumable vices than by the positive virtues for which he had made her his idol.

At last, anxious to reconnoitre the position of the enemy, he thought he might without danger initiate the vidame into the secrets of his situation.  The old commander loved Auguste as a father loves his wife’s children; he was shrewd, dexterous, and very diplomatic.  He listened to the baron, shook his head, and they both held counsel.  The worthy vidame did not share his young friend’s confidence when Auguste declared that in the time in which they now lived, the police and the government were able to lay bare all mysteries, and that if it were absolutely necessary to have recourse to those powers, he should find them most powerful auxiliaries.

The old man replied, gravely:  “The police, my dear boy, is the most incompetent thing on this earth, and government the feeblest in all matters concerning individuals.  Neither the police nor the government can read hearts.  What we might reasonably ask of them is to search for the causes of an act.  But the police and the government are both eminently unfitted for that; they lack, essentially, the personal interest which reveals all to him who wants to know all.  No human power can prevent an assassin or a poisoner from reaching the heart of a prince or the stomach of an honest man.  Passions are the best police.”

The vidame strongly advised the baron to go to Italy, and from Italy to Greece, from Greece to Syria, from Syria to Asia, and not to return until his secret enemies were convinced of his repentance, and would so make tacit peace with him.  But if he did not take that course, then the vidame advised him to stay in the house, and even in his own room, where he would be safe from the attempts of this man Ferragus, and not to leave it until he could be certain of crushing him.

“We should never touch an enemy until we can be sure of taking his head off,” he said, gravely.

The old man, however, promised his favorite to employ all the astuteness with which Heaven had provided him (without compromising any one) in reconnoitring the enemy’s ground, and laying his plans for future victory.  The Commander had in his service a retired Figaro, the wiliest monkey that ever walked in human form; in earlier days as clever as a devil, working his body like a galley-slave, alert as a thief, sly as a woman, but now fallen into the decadence of genius for want of practice since the new constitution of Parisian society, which has reformed even the valets of comedy.  This Scapin emeritus was attached to his master as to a superior being; but the shrewd