Mr. Timm was sitting on a lounge in his room, one leg crossed over the other, his head resting in his hands, and blowing mighty clouds from his cigar, while he was evidently thinking deeply. By his side, on the lounge, lay the letters which he had found among the archives. There were not many of them, all written in the same delicate handwriting, and upon rather grayish paper, such as was universally in use, even for letters, some forty years ago. The letters were rather old, apparently, for the ink was very much faded; but no contrary date was to be found anywhere. "These letters ought to be valuable in some way," said Albert, speaking confidentially to his best friend and only intimate, his dear own self, "only I do not know how. If I should succeed in finding the answers, it would go hard indeed if a clever fellow, such as I am, could not ferret out the whole of the great secret. Besides, I think I am on the track. It is improbable, though not impossible, that both should have died, mother and child alike. Marie was evidently a fine girl, and that little trouble and heart-sore could hardly have cost her her life. And the child, illegitimate as it was, enjoyed, in all probability, the proverbial good luck of such children. Therefore, the mother may be alive, and the child may be alive. If they are both alive,--and I do hope and wish it,--they either know something of the codicil to the will of the noble scapegrace, or they do not. If they have been informed of it,--which again is not very probable, since it would be a perfectly sublime height of stupidity to shut the mouth against such a roast pigeon flying about and seeking to be devoured,--they must be made to apply for their property. If they should know nothing of it, which is more likely, we must assist them in their lamentable ignorance. In any case we must first of all find out where they are. It is not to be presumed that they have concealed themselves in the neighborhood. For in the first place Harald would have found them, when he spared no money and left no means unemployed in his search; and secondly, such people are very apt to run, on like occasions, as far as they can; and thirdly, this Monsieur d'Estein seems to have been a very sly fox, who would be sure to hide his little dove as safely as could be done from the fierce lion. This monsieur is every way a very inconvenient quantity in the problem, which I should like to eliminate if I knew how to do it. If he did not die soon afterwards, he probably did a good deal of mischief yet; perhaps he even married little Marie, adopted the child, carried both of them back to France or to America, and spoilt the whole game for me--who knows? That would be disgraceful; for the story might really become highly interesting to me and to others. I should like to see the faces of the two, if I appeared before them and said: My good friends, what will you give me if I help you to a nice little fortune of a hundred thousand dollars or so? Or