A man who spoke little, and wrote less, who indulged in no dissipations, nor seemed to have taste for any, was a difficult subject to treat; and so Fouché found, as, day after day, his spies reported to him the utter failure of all their schemes to entrap him. Lajolais, the friend of Pichegru, and the man who betrayed him, was the chief instrument the Police Minister used to obtain secret information. Being well born, and possessed of singularly pleasing manners, he had the _entrée_ of the best society of Paris, where his gay, easy humor made him a great favorite. Lajolais, however, could never penetrate into the quiet domesticity of Moreau's life, nor make any greater inroad on his intimacy than a courteous salutation as they passed each other in the garden of the Luxembourg. At the humble restaurant where he dined each day for two francs, the "General," as he was distinctively called, never spoke to any one. Unobtrusive and quiet, he occupied a little table in a recess of the window, and arose the moment he finished his humble meal. After this he was to be seen in the garden of the Luxembourg, with a cigar and a book, or sometimes, without either, seated pensively under a tree for hours together. If he had been conscious of the "espionage" established all over his actions, he could scarcely have adopted a more guarded or more tantalizing policy. To the verbal communications of Pichegru and Armand Polignac, he returned vague replies; their letters he never answered at all, and Lajolais had to confess that, after two months of close pursuit, the game was as far from him as ever! "You have come to repeat the old song to me, Monsieur Lajolais," said Fouché, one evening, as his wily subordinate entered the room; "you have nothing to tell me, eh?" "Very little, Monsieur le Ministre, but still something. I have at last found out where Moreau spends all his evenings. I told you that about half-past nine o'clock every night all lights were extinguished in his quarters, and, from the unbroken stillness, it was conjectured that he had retired to bed. Now, it seems that, about an hour later, he is accustomed to leave his house, and crossing the Place de l'Odeon, to enter the little street called the 'Allée de Caire,' where, in a small house next but one to the corner, resides a certain officer, 'en retraite'--a Colonel Mahon, of the Cuirassiers." "A Royalist?" "This is suspected, but not known. His politics, however, are not in question here; the attraction is of a different order." "Ha! I perceive; he has a wife or a daughter." "Better still, a mistress. You may have heard of the famous Caroline de Stassart, that married a Dutchman named D'Aerschot." "Madame Laure, as they called her," said Fouché, laughing. "The same. She has lived as Mahon's wife for some years, and was as such introduced into society; in fact, there is no reason, seeing what society is in these days, that she should not participate in all its pleasures."