Quenu was exhibiting his white paunch at the shop door when his wife came down.  He was surprised to see her going out in full dress at ten o’clock in the morning.  “Hallo!  Where are you off to?” he asked.

She pretended that she was going out with Madame Taboureau, and added that she would call at the Gaite Theatre to buy some tickets.  Quenu hurried after her to tell her to secure some front seats, so that they might be able to see well.  Then, as he returned to the shop, Lisa made her way to the cab-stand opposite St. Eustache, got into a cab, pulled down the blinds, and told the driver to go to the Gaite Theatre.  She felt afraid of being followed.  When she had booked two seats, however, she directed the cabman to drive her to the Palais de Justice.  There, in front of the gate, she discharged him, and then quietly made her way through the halls and corridors to the Prefecture of Police.

She soon lost herself in a noisy crowd of police officers and gentlemen in long frock-coats, but at last gave a man half a franc to guide her to the Prefect’s rooms.  She found, however, that the Prefect only received such persons as came with letters of audience; and she was shown into a small apartment, furnished after the style of a boarding-house parlour.  A fat, bald-headed official, dressed in black from head to foot, received her there with sullen coldness.  What was her business? he inquired.  Thereupon she raised her veil, gave her name, and told her story, clearly and distinctly, without a pause.  The bald man listened with a weary air.

“You are this man’s sister-in-law, are you not?” he inquired, when she had finished.

“Yes,” Lisa candidly replied.  “We are honest, straight-forward people, and I am anxious that my husband should not be compromised.”

The official shrugged his shoulders, as though to say that the whole affair was a great nuisance.

“Do you know,” he said impatiently, “that I have been pestered with this business for more than a year past?  Denunciation after denunciation has been sent to me, and I am being continually goaded and pressed to take action.  You will understand that if I haven’t done so as yet, it is because I prefer to wait.  We have good reasons for our conduct in the matter.  Stay, now, here are the papers relating to it.  I’ll let you see them.”

He laid before her an immense collection of papers in a blue wrapper.  Lisa turned them over.  They were like detached chapters of the story she had just been relating.  The commissaires of police at Havre, Rouen, and Vernon notified Florent’s arrival within their respective jurisdictions.  Then came a report which announced that he had taken up his residence with the Quenu-Gradelles.  Next followed his appointment at the markets, an account of his mode of life, the spending of his evenings at Monsieur Lebigre’s; not a detail was deficient.  Lisa, quite astounded as she was, noticed that the