“What is the matter?” asked the doctor.  “Your greeting is quite funereal.  Are you not well?”

“I am merely preoccupied, and that is excusable on the eve of the battle we are about to fight,” returned Mascarin.

He only, however, told a portion of the truth; for there was more in the background, which he did not wish to confide to his friend.  Toto Chupin’s revolt had disquieted him.  Let there be but a single flaw in the axletree, and one day it will snap in twain; and Mascarin wanted to eliminate this flaw.

“Pooh!” remarked the doctor, playing with his locket, “we shall succeed.  What have we to fear, after all,—­opposition on Paul’s part?”

“Paul may resent a little,” answered Mascarin disdainfully; “but I have decided that he shall be present at our meeting of to-day.  It will be a stormy one, so be prepared.  We might give him his medicine in minims, but I prefer the whole dose at once.”

“The deuce you do!  Suppose he should be frightened, and make off with our secret.”

“He won’t make off,” replied Mascarin in a tone which froze his listener’s blood.  “He can’t escape from us any more than the cockchafer can from the string that a child has fastened to it.  Do you not understand weak natures like his?  He is the glove, I the strong hand beneath it.”

The doctor did not argue this point, but merely murmured,—­

“Let us hope that it is so.”

“Should we have any opposition,” resumed Mascarin, “it will come from Catenac.  I may be able to force him into co-operation with us, but his heart will not be in the enterprise.”

“Do you propose to bring Catenac into this affair?” asked Hortebise in great surprise.

“Assuredly.”

“Why have you changed your plan?”

“Simply because I have recognized the fact that, if we dispensed with his services, we should be entirely at the mercy of a shrewd man of business, because——­”

He broke off, listened for a moment, and then said,—­

“Hush!  I can hear his footstep.”

A dry cough was heard outside, and in another moment Catenac entered the room.

Nature, or profound dissimulation, had gifted Catenac with an exterior which made every one, when first introduced to him, exclaim, “This is an honest and trustworthy man.”  Catenac always looked his clients boldly in the face.  His voice was pleasant, and had a certain ring of joviality in it, and his manner was one of those easy ones which always insure popularity.  He was looked upon as a shrewd lawyer; but yet he did not shine in court.  He must therefore, to make those thirty thousand francs a year which he was credited with doing, have some special line of business.  He assayed rather risky matters, which might bring both parties into the clutches of the criminal law, or, at any rate, leave them with a taint upon both their names.  A sensational lawsuit is begun, and the public eagerly await the result;