"I shall open negotiations with the Council of Regency to-day. According to my information, it will not be a difficult matter. But this Grand-duke Hermann. . . ." "His Royal Highness is at present staying at Bruggen Castle, under the name of Pierre Leduc. I will supply all the necessary proofs of his identity." That same evening, Lupin took the road back to Paris, with the intention of actively hurrying on the trial of Malreich and the seven scoundrels. * * * * * It would be wearisome to recapitulate the story of the case: the facts, down to the smallest details, are in the memory of one and all. It was one of those sensational events which still form a subject of conversation and discussion among the weather-beaten laborers in the remotest villages. But what I wish to recall is the enormous part played by Lupin in the conduct of the case and in the incidents appertaining to the preliminary inquiry. As a matter of fact, it was he who managed the inquiry. From the very start, he took the place of the authorities, ordering police-searches, directing the measures to be taken, prescribing the questions to be put to the prisoners, assuming the responsibility for everything. We can all remember the universal amazement when, morning after morning, we read in the papers those letters, so irresistible in their masterly logic, signed, by turns: "ARSÈNE LUPIN, _Examining-magistrate_." "ARSÈNE LUPIN, _Public Prosecutor_." "ARSÈNE LUPIN, _Minister of Justice_." "ARSÈNE LUPIN, _Copper_." He flung himself into the business with a spirit, an ardor, a violence, even, that was astonishing in one usually so full of light-hearted chaff and, when all was said, so naturally disposed by temperament to display a certain professional indulgence. No, this time he was prompted by hatred. He hated Louis de Malreich, that bloodthirsty scoundrel, that foul brute, of whom he had always been afraid and who, even beaten, even in prison, still gave him that sensation of dread and repugnance which one feels at the sight of a reptile. Besides, had not Malreich had the audacity to persecute Dolores? "He has played and lost," said Lupin. "He shall pay for it with his head." That was what he wanted for his terrible enemy: the scaffold, the bleak, dull morning when the blade of the guillotine slides down and kills. . . . It was a strange prisoner whom the examining-magistrate questioned for months on end between the four walls of his room, a strange figure, that bony man, with the skeleton face and the lifeless eyes! He seemed quite out of himself. His thoughts were not there, but elsewhere. And he cared so little about answering! "My name is Leon Massier." That was the one sentence to which he confined himself. And Lupin retorted. "You lie. Leon Massier, born at Perigueux, left fatherless at the age of ten, died seven years ago. You took his papers. But you forgot his death-certificate. Here it is."