They all went up to her.

“What friend,” inquired the commissary of police.

“You know her very well, sir.  It is that poor girl who had taken me home with her at Batignolles when I left the hospital, who came to my assistance during the Commune, and whom you helped to get out of the Versailles prisons.”

“Do you know what has become of her?”

“Only since yesterday, when I received a letter from her, a very friendly letter.  She writes that she has found money to set up a dressmaking establishment, and that she is relying upon me to be her forewoman.  She is going to open in the Rue St. Lazare; but, in the mean time, she is stopping in the Rue du Cirque.”

M. de Tregars and Maxence had started slightly.

“What is your friend’s name?” they inquired at once.

Not being aware of the particulars of the two young men’s visit to the Rue du Cirque, the commissary of police could not understand the cause of their agitation.

“I think,” he said, “that it would hardly be proper now to send for that girl.”

“It is to her alone, on the contrary, that we must resort,” interrupted M. de Tregars.

And, as he had good reasons to mistrust Mme. Fortin, he took the commissary outside the room, on the landing; and there, in a few words, he explained to him that this Zelie was precisely the same woman whom they had found in the Rue du Cirque, in that sumptuous mansion where Vincent Favoral, under the simple name of Vincent, had been living, according to the neighbors, in such a princely style.

The commissary of police was astounded.  Why had he not known all this sooner?  Better late than never, however.

“Ah! you are right, M. le Marquis, a hundred times right!” he declared.  “This girl must evidently know Vincent Favoral’s secret, the key of the enigma that we are vainly trying to solve.  What she would not tell to you, a stranger, she will tell to Lucienne, her friend.”

Maxence offered to go himself for Zelie Cadelle.

“No,” answered Marius.  “If she should happen to know you, she would mistrust you, and would refuse to come.”

It was, therefore, M. Fortin who was despatched to the Rue du Cirque, and who went off muttering, though he had received five francs to take a carriage, and five francs for his trouble.

“And now,” said the commissary of police to Maxence, “we must both of us get out of the way.  I, because the fact of my being a commissary would frighten Mme. Cadelle; you because, being Vincent Favoral’s son, your presence would certainly prove embarrassing to her.”

And so they went out; but M. de Tregars did not remain long alone with Mlle. Lucienne.  M. Fortin had had the delicacy not to tarry on the way.

Eleven o’clock struck as Zelie Cadelle rushed like a whirlwind into her friend’s room.

Such had been his haste, that she had given no thought whatever to her dress.  She had stuck upon her uncombed hair the first bonnet she had laid her hand upon, and thrown an old shawl over the wrapper in which she had received Marius in the afternoon.