“And--do you know who that woman is?” “No. But I can find out from the writer of the article in this paper, who says that he knows her. See!” Mlle. Lucienne took the paper which Maxence was holding out to her: but she hardly condescended to look at it. “But what’s your idea now?” “I do not believe that my father is innocent; but I believe that there are people more guilty than he,--skillful and prudent knaves, who have made use of him as a man of straw,--villains who will quietly digest their share of the millions (the biggest one, of course), while he will be sent to prison.” A fugitive blush colored Mlle. Lucienne’s cheeks. “That being the case,” she interrupted, “what do you expect to do?” “Avenge my father, if possible, and discover his accomplices, if he has any.” She held out her hand to him. “That’s right,” she said. “But how will you go about it?” “I don’t know yet. At any rate, I must first of all run to the newspaper office, and get that woman’s address.” But Mlle. Lucienne stopped him. “No,” she uttered: “it isn’t there that you must go. You must come with me to see my friend the commissary.” Maxence received this suggestion with a gesture of surprise, almost of terror. “Why, how can you think of such a thing?” he exclaimed. “My father is fleeing from justice; and you want me to take for my confidant a commissary of police,--the very man whose duty it is to arrest him, if he can find him!” But he interrupted himself for a moment, staring and gaping, as if the truth had suddenly flashed upon his mind in dazzling evidence. “For my father has not gone abroad,” he went on. “It is in Paris that he is hiding: I am sure of it. You have seen him?” Mlle. Lucienne really thought that Maxence was losing his mind. “I have seen your father--I?” she said. “Yes, last evening. How could I have forgotten it? While you were waiting for me down stairs, between eleven and half-past eleven a middle-aged man, thin, wearing a long overcoat, came and asked for me.” “Yes, I remember.” “He spoke to you in the yard.” “That’s a fact.” “What did he tell you?” She hesitated for a moment, evidently trying to tax her memory; then, “Nothing,” she replied, “that he had not already said before the Fortins; that he wanted to see you on important business, and was sorry not to find you in. What surprised me, though, is, that he was speaking as if he knew me, and knew that I was a friend of yours.” Then, striking her forehead, “Perhaps you are right,” she went on. “Perhaps that man was indeed your father. Wait a minute. Yes, he seemed quite excited, and at every moment he looked around towards the door. He said it would be impossible for him to return, but that he would write to you, and that probably he would require your assistance and your services.”