Suddenly checking himself, and lowering his voice, Tirauclair added:  “But first of all, just do me the favor to get up.  Now, wait a moment, and when I motion you, open that door there, on the left, very suddenly.  Mariette, my housekeeper, who is curiosity incarnate, is standing there listening.  I hear her hair rubbing against the lock.  Now!”

The young detective immediately obeyed, and Mariette, caught in the act, hastened away, pursued by her master’s sarcasms.  “You might have known that you couldn’t succeed at that!” he shouted after her.

Although Lecoq and Father Absinthe were much nearer the door than old Tirauclair, neither of them had heard the slightest sound; and they looked at each other in astonishment, wondering whether their host had been playing a little farce for their benefit, or whether his sense of hearing was really so acute as this incident would seem to indicate.

“Now,” said Tabaret, settling himself more comfortably upon his pillows—­“now I will listen to you, my boy.  Mariette will not come back again.”

On his way to Tabaret’s, Lecoq had busied himself in preparing his story; and it was in the clearest possible manner that he related all the particulars, from the moment when Gevrol opened the door of the Poivriere to the instant when May leaped over the garden wall in the rear of the Hotel de Sairmeuse.

While the young detective was telling his story, old Tabaret seemed completely transformed.  His gout was entirely forgotten.  According to the different phases of the recital, he either turned and twisted on his bed, uttering little cries of delight or disappointment, or else lay motionless, plunged in the same kind of ecstatic reverie which enthusiastic admirers of classical music yield themselves up to while listening to one of the great Beethoven’s divine sonatas.

“If I had been there!  If only I had been there!” he murmured regretfully every now and then through his set teeth, though when Lecoq’s story was finished, enthusiasm seemed decidedly to have gained the upper hand.  “It is beautiful! it is grand!” he exclaimed.  “And with just that one phrase:  ‘It is the Prussians who are coming,’ for a starting point!  Lecoq, my boy, I must say that you have conducted this affair like an angel!”

“Don’t you mean to say like a fool?” asked the discouraged detective.

“No, my friend, certainly not.  You have rejoiced my old heart.  I can die; I shall have a successor.  Ah! that Gevrol who betrayed you—­for he did betray you, there’s no doubt about it—­that obtuse, obstinate ‘General’ is not worthy to blacken your shoes!”

“You overpower me, Monsieur Tabaret!” interrupted Lecoq, as yet uncertain whether his host was poking fun at him or not.  “But it is none the less true that May has disappeared, and I have lost my reputation before I had begun to make it.”