dominoes ceased, faces were seen at the glass of the partition, and Madame Lépic fairly stared, forgetting for once her rôle of disinterested knitter. Without stopping to pay, without seeming to see anybody or anything, Benner strode nervously and quickly out of the café. When he was gone, Madame Lépic touched her bell, one of the drowsy waiters came, received a whispered order, and went out of the front door hatless. A few moments later, even before Benner had disappeared along the boulevard in the direction of his studio, a neatly dressed man came out of the police station near the café and walked in the same direction, the sculptor had taken. After Benner had entered the _porte-cochère_ of the great building where his studio was, the police agent went into the concierge’s little office near the door, and sat there as if he were at home. In a few moments a nervous step was heard on the asphalt of the court-yard, and the agent had only time to withdraw into the gloom of the corner behind the stove when Benner passed out again, looking neither to the right nor the left. He was evidently much excited, and clutched rather than held a small parcel in his hand. The agent followed him a short distance behind, and, meeting a _sergent de ville_, paused to say a word to him. As Benner climbed on the top of an Odéon omnibus, the agent took a seat inside. Benner had not reached the interior boulevard before his studio was searched. It was now nearly six o’clock, and the omnibus was crowded all the way across the city. As soon as the foot of the Rue des Beaux Arts was reached, Benner hurriedly descended, without waiting to stop the omnibus, and ran to the Academy. Here he sought the concierge, asked him a few questions, and then walked quickly away to the east side of the Luxembourg Gardens, where he rang the bell at the door of a house. He asked the servant who answered the bell if Professor Brunin was at home, and was evidently chagrined at being told he was absent and would not return for an hour or two. Entering the nearest café, he called for pen and paper, and wrote three pages rapidly, but legibly. By this time he had grown calmer in mind, not losing, however, the physical spring which his first excitement had induced. When his letter was finished he put it in an envelope, addressed it, and left it at the professor’s house. This done, he walked rapidly across the Luxembourg Gardens to the Odéon, took an omnibus, accompanied as before by the agent, and at the end of the route, in the Place Pigalle, he descended, hastened to his studio, and did not come out again that evening. The great window was lighted all night long, and the agent in the entry could hear sawing, hammering, and filing at intervals, as he listened at the door every hour or two.