At Paris, where he knew the Consul had retired, Pradès soon found trace of him, and learned where was the retreat of his brother-in-law. His brother-in-law! He pronounced the word with a wicked sneer, as if it had for him a something understood about the sweet and maiden remembrance of the dead girl. There, in gay Paris, with some resources which allowed him to pay for his board and lodging in a third-rate hotel, he searched, asked, discovered, at last, the address of the ex-Consul, and presented himself to Rovère, who felt, at sight of this spectre, his anger return. The first time that Charles Pradès had asked at the lodge if M. Rovère was at home, the Moniches had permitted him to go upstairs, and perhaps Mme. Moniche would have suspected the man in the sombrero if she had not surprised Jacques Dantin before the open safe and the papers. Pradès, moreover, had appeared only three times at Rovère's house, and on the day of the murder he had entered at the moment when Mme. Moniche was sweeping the upper floors, and Moniche was working in his shop in the rear of the lodge, and the staircase was empty. He rang, and Rovère, with dragging steps, came to open the door. Rovère was ill and was a little ennuied, and he believed, or instinctively hoped, that it was the woman in black--his daughter! Everything served Pradès's projects. He had come not to kill, but by some means to gain entrance to Rovère's apartments, and, when once there, to find some resource--a loan, more or less freely given, more or less forced--and he would leave with it. Rovère, already worn out, weary of his former supplications, felt tempted to shut the door in his face, but Pradès pushed it back, entered, closed it, and said: "A last interview! You will never see me again! But listen to me!" Then, Rovère allowed him to enter the salon, and despite the terrible weakness which he experienced wished to make this a final, decisive interview; to disembarrass himself once for all of this everlasting beggar, sometimes whining, sometimes threatening. "Will you not let me die in peace?" he said. "Have I not paid my debt?" But Pradès had seated himself in a fauteuil, crossed his legs and hung over his knee his sombrero, on which he drummed a minstrel march. "My dear Monsieur Rovère, it is a last appeal for funds. I believe that America is better than Paris. And in order to return there or to do what I ought here, I must have what I have not--money!" "I am tired of giving you money!" Rovère quickly replied. And between these two men, bound by the remembrance of the dead girl--a bond burdensome to the one, imposed upon by the other--a storm of bitter words and harsh sentiments arose and kindled fierce anger in both. "I tried to let you remain in peace, my dear Consul. But hunger has driven the wolf out of the woods. I am very hungry. And here I am!" "I have nothing with which to feed your appetites. You are nothing but a burden to me."