"Touquet the barber? My word, ladies, you may say whatever you will, but I don't like that man." "He's a very handsome man, however." "Yes, of the same height as M. Legras; but there is something hard and false and stern in his appearance." "Yes, for some time past; formerly he was gayer, more open. Now monsieur never chats; he has grown proud." "That's not surprising; he has made money." "Yes, by shaving beards perhaps." "It's a good deal more likely he has made it by assisting the love affairs of some great nobleman, in procuring and abducting some beauty." "Come, ladies, don't be so malicious. As for me, you know I haven't a bad tongue. Touquet is very skilful at his trade. I know very well that in order to buy and pay for that house where he now is he must have shaved a good many faces; but they say now the barber is very steady and economical." "When the devil is old--" "Touquet is not old; he's hardly over forty years." "Adopting that little girl should have brought him good luck." "That's what I was telling monsieur. Poor little thing! Nobody knows anything about her, except that she had a father." "Well, neighbor, somebody found a letter on him having for an address, 'To Monsieur Moranval, gentleman.'" "Ah, he was a gentleman?" "Yes, my dear. Oh, I remember all that as if it were yesterday." "How fortunate one is in having such a memory! And what did the letter say?" "It seemed that there were only a few lines of which nobody could make much of anything; someone recommended to this Moranval to take great precautions in the business which brought him to Paris. But what business? Nobody knows anything about it." "Did they find nothing else on him?" "No; there is little doubt that the poor man was robbed after being murdered." "Did they go to Touquet's to inquire what he knew about it?" "Touquet answered the officers of justice that the man had come down to his house the evening before, and had introduced himself as a gentleman who was about to remain for some time in Paris; that he had first asked him to put his little girl to bed, and that later he had gone out, saying he should be absent for an hour or so. Touquet had waited up for him a great part of the night, and it was not till the next day that he learned from public rumor that a man had been found murdered in the Rue Saint-Honore, a short distance from his house; that, being already uneasy about his guest, he had gone to see the victim, and had recognized the man who had arrived at his place the evening before."