“Now, my dear Felix,” resumed the commissary, “you will please get yourself up as near as possible like a restaurant-waiter, and take this letter to its address.”

“At this hour!”

“Yes.  The Baroness de Thaller is out to a ball.  You will tell the servants that you are bringing her an answer concerning an important matter.  They know nothing about it; but they will allow you to wait for their mistress in the porter’s lodge.  As soon as she comes in, you will hand her the letter, stating that two gentlemen who are taking supper in your restaurant are waiting for the answer.  It may be that she will exclaim that you are a scoundrel, that she does not know what it means:  in that case, we shall have been anticipated, and you must get away as fast as you can.  But the chances are, that she will give you two thousand francs; and then you must so manage, that she will be seen plainly when she does it.  Is it all understood?”

“Perfectly.”

“Go ahead, then, and do not lose a minute.  I shall wait.”

Away from Mlle. Lucienne, Maxence had gradually been recalled to the strangeness of the situation; and it was with a mingled feeling of curiosity and surprise that he observed the commissary acting and bustling about.

The good man had found again all the activity of his youth, together with that fever of hope and that impatience of success, which usually disappear with age.

He was going over the whole of the case again,—­his first meeting with Mlle. Lucienne, the various attempts upon her life; and he had just taken out of the file the letter of information which had been intrusted to him, in order to compare the writing with that of the letter taken from his adversary by M. de Tregars, when the latter came in all out of breath.

“Zelie has spoken!” he said.

And, at once addressing Maxence,

“You, my dear friend,” he resumed, “you must run to the Hotel des Folies.”

“Is Lucienne worse?”

“No.  Lucienne is getting on well enough.  Zelie has spoken; but there is no certainty, that, after due reflection, she will not repent, and go and give the alarm.  You will return, therefore, and you will not lose sight of her until I call for her in the morning.  If she wishes to go out, you must prevent her.”

The commissary had understood the importance of the precaution.

“You must prevent her,” he added, “even by force; and I authorize you, if need be, to call upon the agent whom I have placed on duty, watching the Hotel des Folies, and to whom I am going to send word immediately.”

Maxence started off on a run.

“Poor fellow!” murmured Marius, “I know where your father is.  What are we going to learn now?”

He had scarcely had time to communicate the information he had received from Mme. Cadelle, when the first of the commissary’s emissaries made his appearance.