No one in the house had the slightest suspicion of the avocations of the proprietor.  Besides, even the humblest agent of police would be expected to possess a degree of acuteness for which no one gave M. Tabaret credit.  Indeed, they mistook for incipient idiocy his continual abstraction of mind.

It is true that all who knew him remarked the singularity of his habits.  His frequent absences from home had given to his proceedings an appearance at once eccentric and mysterious.  Never was young libertine more irregular in his habits than this old man.  He came or failed to come home to his meals, ate it mattered not what or when.  He went out at every hour of the day and night, often slept abroad, and even disappeared for entire weeks at a time.  Then too he received the strangest visitors, odd looking men of suspicious appearance, and fellows of ill-favoured and sinister aspect.

This irregular way of living had robbed the old fellow of much consideration.  Many believed they saw in him a shameless libertine, who squandered his income in disreputable places.  They would remark to one another, “Is it not disgraceful, a man of his age?”

He was aware of all this tittle-tattle, and laughed at it.  This did not, however, prevent many of his tenants from seeking his society and paying court to him.  They would invite him to dinner, but he almost invariably refused.

He seldom visited but one person of the house, but with that one he was very intimate, so much so indeed, that he was more often in her apartment, than in his own.  She was a widow lady, who for fifteen years had occupied an apartment on the third floor.  Her name was Madame Gerdy, and she lived with her son Noel, whom she adored.

Noel Gerdy was a man thirty-three years of age, but looking older; tall and well made, with a noble and intelligent face, large black eyes, and black hair which curled naturally.  An advocate, he passed for having great talent, and greater industry, and had already gained a certain amount of notoriety.  He was an obstinate worker, cold and meditative, though devoted to his profession, and affected, with some ostentation, perhaps, a great rigidity of principle, and austerity of manners.

In Madame Gerdy’s apartment, old Tabaret felt himself quite at home.  He considered her as a relation, and looked upon Noel as a son.  In spite of her fifty years, he had often thought of asking the hand of this charming widow, and was restrained less by the fear of a refusal than its consequence.  To propose and to be rejected would sever the existing relations, so pleasurable to him.  However, he had by his will, which was deposited with his notary constituted this young advocate his sole legatee; with the single condition of founding an annual prize of two thousand francs to be bestowed on the police agent who during the year had unravelled the most obscure and mysterious crime.