Morange had hastily raised his head, and as sudden light flashed on his memory he looked at Constance with dilated eyes. Before he could even weigh his words he let everything escape him in a cry of surprise: "Alexandre-Honoré, Norine's son, the child of Rougemont!" Quite thunderstruck by those words, Constance dropped the tongs she was holding, and gazed into the old man's eyes, diving to the very depths of his soul. "Ah! you know, then!" she said. "What is it you know? You must tell me; hide nothing. Speak! I insist on it!" What he knew? Why, he knew everything. He spoke slowly and at length, as from the depths of a dream. He had witnessed everything, learnt everything--Norine's trouble, the money given by Beauchêne to provide for her at Madame Bourdieu's, the child carried to the Foundling Hospital and then put out to nurse at Rougemont, whence he had fled after stealing three hundred francs. And the old accountant was even aware that the young scamp, after stranding on the pavement of Paris, had led the vilest of lives there. "But who told you all that? How do you know all that?" cried Constance, who felt full of anxiety. He waved his arm with a vague, sweeping gesture, as if to take in all the surrounding atmosphere, the whole house. He knew those things because they were things pertaining to the place, which people had told him of, or which he had guessed. He could no longer remember exactly how they had reached him. But he knew them well. "You understand," said he, "when one has been in a place for more than thirty years, things end by coming to one naturally. I know everything, everything." Constance started and deep silence fell. He, with his eyes fixed on the embers, had sunk back into the dolorous past. She reflected that it was, after all, preferable that the position should be perfectly plain. Since he was acquainted with everything, it was only needful that she, with all determination and bravery, should utilize him as her docile instrument. "Alexandre-Honoré, the child of Rougemont," she said. "Yes! that is the young man whom I have at last found again. But are you also aware of the steps which I took twelve years ago, when I despaired of finding him, and actually thought him dead?" Morange nodded affirmatively, and she again went on speaking, relating that she had long since renounced her old plans, when all at once destiny had revealed itself to her.