First he went to the brick wing built by de Marillac, where was a vast chamber occupied by Bonnoeil and leading to the great hall, astoundingly high and solemn in spite of its dilapidation, with a brick floor, a ceiling with great beams, and immense windows looking over the terrace towards the Seine.  By a double door with monumental ironwork, set in a wall as thick as a bastille, Mme. de Combray’s apartments were reached, the first room wainscoted, then a boudoir, next a small room hidden by a staircase, and communicating with a lot of other small, low rooms.  A long passage, lighted by three windows opening on the terrace, led, leaving the Marquise’s bedchamber on the right, to the most ancient part of the chateau the front of which had been recently restored.  Having crossed the landing of the steps leading to the garden, one reached the salon; then the dining-room, where there was a stone staircase leading to the first floor.  On this were a long passage and three chambers looking out on the valley of the Seine, and a lot of small rooms that were not used.  All the rest was lofts, where the framework of the roofs crossed.  When a door was opened, frightened bats flapped their wings with a great noise in the darkness of this forest of enormous, worm-eaten beams.  In fact, everything looked very simple; there was no sign whatever of a hiding-place.  The furniture was opened, the walls sounded, and the panels examined without finding any hollow place.  It was now Soyer’s turn to appear.  Whether he feared for himself, or whether Licquet had made him understand that denial was useless, Mme. de Combray’s confidential man consented to guide the detectives.  He took a bunch of keys and followed by Licquet and Legendre, went up to a little room under the roof of a narrow building next to Marillac’s wing.  This room had only one window, on the north, with a bit of green stuff for a curtain; its only furniture was a miserable wooden bed drawn into the middle of the room.  Licquet and the commissary examined the partitions and had them sounded.  Soyer allowed them to rummage in all the corners, then, when they had given up all idea of finding anything themselves, he went up to the bed, put his hand under the mattress and removed a nail.  They immediately heard the fall of a weight behind the wall, which opened, disclosing a chamber large enough to hold fifteen persons.  In it were a wooden bench, a large chafing-dish, silver candlesticks, a trunk full of papers and letters, two packets of hair of different colours, and some treatises on games.  They seized among other things, the funeral oration of the Duc d’Enghien, copied by Placide, and the passport d’Ache had obtained at Rouen in 1803, which was signed by Licquet.  When they had put everything in a bag and closed the partition, when they had sufficiently admired the mechanism which left no crack or opening visible, Soyer, still followed by two policemen, went over the whole chateau,