“Oh, monsieur, come quick! they are taking Monsieur Auguste to prison!  They arrested him on the boulevard; it was he they were looking for; they have examined him.”

The old man bounded like a tiger, rushed through the house with the speed of an arrow, and reached the door on the boulevard in time to see his grandson getting into a hackney-coach with three men.

“Auguste,” he said, “what does all this mean?”

The poor boy burst into tears and fainted away.

“Monsieur, I am the Baron Bourlac, formerly attorney-general,” he said to the commissary of police, whose scarf now attracted his eye.  “I entreat you to explain all this.”

“Monsieur, if you are Baron Bourlac, two words will be enough.  I have just examined this young man, and he admits—­”

“What?”

“The robbery of four thousand francs from Doctor Halpersohn!”

“Is that true, Auguste?”

“Grandpapa, I sent him as security your diamond snuff-box.  I did it to save you from going to prison.”

“Unhappy boy! what have you done?  The diamonds are false!” cried the baron; “I sold the real ones three years ago!”

The commissary of police and his agents looked at each other.  That look, full of many things, was intercepted by Baron Bourlac, and seemed to blast him.

“Monsieur,” he said to the commissary, “you need not feel uneasy; I shall go myself to the prefect; but you are witness to the fact that I kept my grandson ignorant of the loss of the diamonds.  Do your duty; but I implore you, in the name of humanity, put that lad in a cell by himself; I will go to the prison.  To which one are you taking him?”

“Are you really Baron Bourlac?” asked the commissary.

“Oh, monsieur!”

“The fact is that the municipal judge and I doubted if it were possible that you and your grandson could be guilty.  We thought, and the doctor, too, that some scoundrels had taken your name.”

He took the baron aside, and added:—­

“Did you go to see Doctor Halpersohn this morning?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Your grandson went there half an hour after you.”

“Did he?  I knew nothing of that.  I have just returned home, and have not seen my grandson for two days.”

“The writs he has shown me and the examination explain everything,” said the commissary of police.  “I see the cause of the crime.  Monsieur, I ought by rights to arrest you as accomplice to your grandson; for your answers confirm the allegations in Doctor Halpersohn’s complaint.  But these papers, which I here return to you,” holding out to the old man a bundle of papers, “do prove you to be Baron Bourlac.  Nevertheless, you must hold yourself ready to appear before Monsieur Marest, the judge of the Municipal Court who has cognizance of the case.  As for your grandson, I will speak to the procureur du roi, and we will take all the care of him that is due to the grandson of a former judge,—­the victim, no doubt, of youthful error.  But the complaint has been made, the delinquent admits his guilt, I have drawn up the proces-verbal, and served the warrant of arrest; I cannot go back on that.  As for the incarceration, I will put him in the Conciergerie.”