“To baffle Maulincour (who will not persecute us much longer), I have left the protecting roof of the embassy, and am now safe from all inquiry in the rue des Enfants-Rouges, number 12, with an old woman, Madame Etienne Gruget, mother of that Ida, who shall pay dear for her folly.  Come to-morrow, at nine in the morning.  I am in a room which is reached only by an interior staircase.  Ask for Monsieur Camuset.  Adieu; I kiss your forehead, my darling.”

Jacquet looked at Jules with a sort of honest terror, the sign of a true compassion, as he made his favorite exclamation in two separate and distinct tones,—­

“The deuce! the deuce!”

“That seems clear to you, doesn’t it?” said Jules.  “Well, in the depths of my heart there is a voice that pleads for my wife, and makes itself heard above the pangs of jealousy.  I must endure the worst of all agony until to-morrow; but to-morrow, between nine and ten I shall know all; I shall be happy or wretched for all my life.  Think of me then, Jacquet.”

“I shall be at your house to-morrow at eight o’clock.  We will go together; I’ll wait for you, if you like, in the street.  You may run some danger, and you ought to have near you some devoted person who’ll understand a mere sign, and whom you can safely trust.  Count on me.”

“Even to help me in killing some one?”

“The deuce! the deuce!” said Jacquet, repeating, as it were, the same musical note.  “I have two children and a wife.”

Jules pressed his friend’s hand and went away; but returned immediately.

“I forgot the letter,” he said.  “But that’s not all, I must reseal it.”

“The deuce! the deuce! you opened it without saving the seal; however, it is still possible to restore it.  Leave it with me and I’ll bring it to you secundum scripturam.”

“At what time?”

“Half-past five.”

“If I am not yet in, give it to the porter and tell him to send it up to madame.”

“Do you want me to-morrow?”

“No.  Adieu.”

Jules drove at once to the place de la Rotonde du Temple, where he left his cabriolet and went on foot to the rue des Enfants-Rouges.  He found the house of Madame Etienne Gruget and examined it.  There, the mystery on which depended the fate of so many persons would be cleared up; there, at this moment, was Ferragus, and to Ferragus all the threads of this strange plot led.  The Gordian knot of the drama, already so bloody, was surely in a meeting between Madame Jules, her husband, and that man; and a blade able to cut the closest of such knots would not be wanting.