"Upright and with clean hands," repeated the Prince. "Yes, those were his words; I recall them, too. That might have been his own device, do you not think so? My brother repurchased the house," he added after a pause. "I do not know how _they_ have furnished it, but the façade should not be changed. It is of the seventeenth century and has the grand style of that period. You shall judge of it yourself this afternoon, for I do not intend to remain here long. I count upon going to the d'Ivrea house in this same cab as soon as we have engaged our apartment in the Rue Bourgogne. You will not leave me--I am not paying a visit to a relative. I have come here to obtain some papers that belong to me by right as the senior. You have been good enough to engage your services as historian for our family until the end of the publication of the 'Mémoires.' Your place, then, is with me." They had taken their places in the carriage while the ex-colonel was thus formulating the program of a proceeding made the more mysterious by these words, and by the irrevocable determination that they indicated. During the three-quarters of an hour that it took them to reach the Rue de Bourgogne, where the lodging-house stood, and then the Rue de Grenelle, they were silent, the Prince absorbed in his thoughts, and the young man out of respect for a sadness of which he divined the cause, without being able to determine its precise nature. The sadness was changed into an actual contraction of pain when the carriage stopped in front of a high _porte-cochère_, above which could be read this inscription, recently restored, as the brilliancy of the lettering indicated: "Hôtel d'Ivrea." Alfred alighted first and waited before the open door, ready to assist the Prince out of the carriage. The latter did not move. This last effort was almost intolerable to him. "I thought at first I should send you in my place, my dear Boyer," he said, finally deciding to alight, "but she would not receive you. It is me that she wishes to see. She has adopted the only way, my veneration for the marshal. Let us go in--but it is so hard!"