There were six or seven other persons. The savants companions were an honest bourgeois and his wife, some shopkeepers of the neighborhood who were very much out of their element. The sight of this person, with his smoothly-shaven face, his eyes hidden behind the dark, round glasses of his spectacles, with his long redingote and his inexplicable physiognomy made these people so uneasy that they left the place where they were whispering together: “He is a detective,” whispered the husband to his wife. “Do you think so?” asked the woman regarding the enigmatic and immovable figure in terror. “_Dieu_! but he has a false look!” While this profoundly comic scene was being acted, without the professional observer of the human heart suspecting for a moment the effect he was producing, nor even noticing that there was any one beside him awaiting audience, the Judge of Instruction was talking with a friend in a small room adjoining his office. Adorned with the autographs and portraits of some famous criminals, this apartment served M. Valette for toilet-room, smoking-room, and also a place of retreat when he wished to chat out of the inevitable presence of his clerk. The judge was a man less than forty years of age, with a handsome profile, clothes cut in the latest fashion and with rings on his fingers, in fact, a magistrate of the new school. He held in his hand the paper on which the savant had written his name in a clear, running hand and passed it to his friend, a simple man of leisure, with one of those physiognomies at once nervous and expressionless which are only seen in Paris. Would you try to read their tastes, habits, or character? It is impossible, so manifold and contradictory are the sensations which have passed over the countenance. This _viveur_ was one of those men who are always present at first representations, who visit painters’ studios, who attend sensational trials, and who pride themselves on being _au courant_ with the affairs of the day, “in the swim,” as they say to-day. After reading the name of Adrien Sixte, he exclaimed: “Well, old fellow, have you the chance of talking with that man! You remember his chapter on love in some old book or other. Ah! he’s a lascar who knows all about the women. But what the devil are you going to question him about?” “About this Greslon case,” replied the judge; “the young man has often been to his house, and the defense has summoned him as witness for the prisoner. A commission of examination has been issued, nothing more.” “I wish I could see him,” said the other. “Would it give you pleasure? Nothing easier. I am going to have him called. You will go out as he comes in. Well, it is settled that we will meet at Durand’s at eight o’clock, is it? Will Gladys be there?” “Of course. Do you know Gladys’ latest?” We were reproaching Christine in her presence for deceiving Jacques, when she said: “But she must have two lovers, for she spends in one year twice what each one gives her!”