Maxence received this suggestion with a gesture of surprise, almost of terror.

“Why, how can you think of such a thing?” he exclaimed.  “My father is fleeing from justice; and you want me to take for my confidant a commissary of police,—­the very man whose duty it is to arrest him, if he can find him!”

But he interrupted himself for a moment, staring and gaping, as if the truth had suddenly flashed upon his mind in dazzling evidence.

“For my father has not gone abroad,” he went on.  “It is in Paris that he is hiding:  I am sure of it.  You have seen him?”

Mlle. Lucienne really thought that Maxence was losing his mind.

“I have seen your father—­I?” she said.

“Yes, last evening.  How could I have forgotten it?  While you were waiting for me down stairs, between eleven and half-past eleven a middle-aged man, thin, wearing a long overcoat, came and asked for me.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“He spoke to you in the yard.”

“That’s a fact.”

“What did he tell you?”

She hesitated for a moment, evidently trying to tax her memory; then,

“Nothing,” she replied, “that he had not already said before the Fortins; that he wanted to see you on important business, and was sorry not to find you in.  What surprised me, though, is, that he was speaking as if he knew me, and knew that I was a friend of yours.”  Then, striking her forehead,

“Perhaps you are right,” she went on.  “Perhaps that man was indeed your father.  Wait a minute.  Yes, he seemed quite excited, and at every moment he looked around towards the door.  He said it would be impossible for him to return, but that he would write to you, and that probably he would require your assistance and your services.”

“You see,” exclaimed Maxence, almost crazy with subdued excitement, “it was my father.  He is going to write; to return, perhaps; and, under the circumstances, to apply to a commissary of police would be sheer folly, almost treason.”

She shook her head.

“So much the more reason,” she uttered, “why you should follow my advice.  Have you ever had occasion to repent doing so?”

“No, but you may be mistaken.”

“I am not mistaken.”

She expressed herself in a tone of such absolute certainty, that Maxence, in the disorder of his mind, was at a loss to know what to imagine, what to believe.

“You must have some reason to urge me thus,” he said.

“I have.”

“Why not tell it to me then?”

“Because I should have no proofs to furnish you of my assertions.  Because I should have to go into details which you would not understand.  Because, above all, I am following one of those inexplicable presentiments which never deceive.”

It was evident that she was not willing to unveil her whole mind; and yet Maxence felt himself terribly staggered.