The estate to which Norbert had conducted the Duchess was admirably adapted for his purpose. The unhappy woman was entirely alone in the world, and had no one to whom she could apply for protection or advice. Her father, the Count de Puymandour, had died suddenly a month before, owing to chagrin caused by his defeat when a candidate for a seat in the Chamber. The brief note from the despairing mother, in which followed the words, “Have mercy! Give me back my child!” hardly describes the terrible events that occurred in the lonely Chateau to which Norbert had conducted his innocent victim. The child of the Duchess de Champdoce had been placed by Jean in the Foundling Hospital at Vendome, while the infant that was baptized with the grandiloquent names of Anne Rene, Gontran de Duepair, Marquis de Champdoce, was the bastard child of a girl living near Montroire, who was known in the neighborhood as “The Witch.” CHAPTER XIX. MASCARIN SPEAKS. This was the conclusion of the manuscript handed by Mascarin to Paul Violaine, and the young man laid down the roll of paper with the remark, “And that is all.” He had consumed six hours in reading this sad account of the follies and crimes of the owners of illustrious names. Mascarin had listened with the complacency of an author who hears his own work read aloud to him, but all the while he was keenly watching him beneath his spectacles and the faces of his companions. The effect that was produced was immense, and exactly what he had anticipated. Paul, Hortebise, and Catenac gazed upon each other with faces in which astonishment at the strange recital, and then at the power of the man who had collected these facts together, were mingled, and Catenac was the first who spoke. The sound of his own voice seemed gradually to dispel the vague sense of apprehension that hung about the office. “Aha!” cried he, “I always said that our old friend Mascarin would make his mark in literature. As soon as his pen touches the paper the business man vanishes; we have no longer a collection of dry facts and proofs, but the stirring pages of a sensational novel.” “Do you really consider that as a mere romance?” asked Hortebise. “It reads like one certainly; you must allow that.” “Catenac,” remarked Mascarin in his bitterly sarcastic tone, “is best able to pronounce upon the truth or falsehood of this narrative, as he is the professional adviser of this same Duke de Champdoce, the very Norbert whose life has just been read to you.” “I do not deny that there is some slight foundation to it,” returned the lawyer. “Then what is it that you do deny?” “Nothing, nothing; I merely objected, more in jest than otherwise, to the sentimental manner in which you have set forward your case.”