Unfortunately, however, man can only place organs of limited power at the disposal of his boundless desires; and Lecoq had not taken twenty steps along the streets before he became aware that if the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak.  His limbs trembled, and his head whirled.  Nature was asserting her rights; during the last forty-eight hours, the young detective had taken scarcely a moment’s rest, and he had, moreover, now passed an entire day without food.

“Am I going to be ill?” he thought, sinking on to a bench.  And he groaned inwardly on recapitulating all that he wished to do that evening.

If he dealt only with the more important matters, must he not at once ascertain the result of Father Absinthe’s search after the man who had recognized one of the victims at the Morgue; test the prisoner’s assertions regarding the box of clothes left at one of the hotels surrounding the Northern Railway Station; and last, but not the least, must he not procure the address of Polyte Chupin’s wife, in order to serve her with the summons to appear before M. Segmuller?

Under the power of urgent necessity, he succeeded in triumphing over his attack of weakness, and rose, murmuring:  “I will go first to the Prefecture and to the Morgue; then I will see.”

But he did not find Father Absinthe at the Prefecture, and no one could give any tidings of him.  He had not been there at all during the day.  Nor could any one indicate, even vaguely, the abode of the Widow Chupin’s daughter-in-law.

On the other hand, however, Lecoq met a number of his colleagues, who laughed and jeered at him unmercifully.  “Ah! you are a shrewd fellow!” they said, “it seems that you have just made a wonderful discovery, and it’s said you are going to be decorated with the Legion of Honor.”

Gevrol’s influence betrayed itself everywhere.  The jealous inspector had taken pains to inform all his colleagues and subordinates that poor Lecoq, crazed by ambition, persisted in declaring that a low, vulgar murderer trying to escape justice was some great personage in disguise.  However, the jeers and taunts of which Lecoq was the object had but little effect upon him, and he consoled himself with the reflection that, “He laughs best who laughs last.”

If he were restless and anxious as he walked along the Quai des Orfevres, it was because he could not explain Father Absinthe’s prolonged absence, and because he feared that Gevrol, mad with jealousy, might attempt, in some underhand way, to frustrate his, Lecoq’s, efforts to arrive at a solution of the mystery.

At the Morgue the young detective met with no better success than at the Prefecture.  After ringing three or four times, one of the keepers opened the door and informed him that the bodies had not been identified, and that the old police agent had not been seen since he went away early in the morning.

“This is a bad beginning,” thought Lecoq.  “I will go and get some dinner—­that, perhaps, will change the luck; at all events, I have certainly earned the bottle of good wine to which I intend to treat myself.”