“Yes,” she went on, “you want this Madame Marneffe to drop the prey she has between her teeth.  But how do you expect to make a tiger drop his piece of beef?  Can you do it by patting his back and saying, ’Poor Puss’?  You are illogical.  You want a battle fought, but you object to blows.—­Well, I grant you the innocence you are so careful over.  I have always found that there was material for hypocrisy in honesty!  One day, three months hence, a poor priest will come to beg of you forty thousand francs for a pious work—­a convent to be rebuilt in the Levant—­in the desert.—­If you are satisfied with your lot, give the good man the money.  You will pay more than that into the treasury.  It will be a mere trifle in comparison with what you will get, I can tell you.”

She rose, standing on the broad feet that seemed to overflow her satin shoes; she smiled, bowed, and vanished.

“The Devil has a sister,” said Victorin, rising.

He saw the hideous stranger to the door, a creature called up from the dens of the police, as on the stage a monster comes up from the third cellar at the touch of a fairy’s wand in a ballet-extravaganza.

After finishing what he had to do at the Courts, Victorin went to call on Monsieur Chapuzot, the head of one of the most important branches of the Central Police, to make some inquiries about the stranger.  Finding Monsieur Chapuzot alone in his office, Victorin thanked him for his help.

“You sent me an old woman who might stand for the incarnation of the criminal side of Paris.”

Monsieur Chapuzot laid his spectacles on his papers and looked at the lawyer with astonishment.

“I should not have taken the liberty of sending anybody to see you without giving you notice beforehand, or a line of introduction,” said he.

“Then it was Monsieur le Prefet—?”

“I think not,” said Chapuzot.  “The last time that the Prince de Wissembourg dined with the Minister of the Interior, he spoke to the Prefet of the position in which you find yourself—­a deplorable position—­and asked him if you could be helped in any friendly way.  The Prefet, who was interested by the regrets his Excellency expressed as to this family affair, did me the honor to consult me about it.

“Ever since the present Prefet has held the reins of this department —­so useful and so vilified—­he has made it a rule that family matters are never to be interfered in.  He is right in principle and in morality; but in practice he is wrong.  In the forty-five years that I have served in the police, it did, from 1799 till 1815, great services in family concerns.  Since 1820 a constitutional government and the press have completely altered the conditions of existence.  So my advice, indeed, was not to intervene in such a case, and the Prefet did me the honor to agree with my remarks.  The Head of the detective branch has orders, in my presence, to take no steps; so if you have had any