"Where I got many more. In your drawer. The letters you were saving for this infamous scoundrel. I wanted to know what she had written to him." "Mère Bidoux!" cried Aristide. "Those letters were sacred!" "Bah!" said Mme. Bidoux, unabashed. "There is nothing sacred to a sapper or an old grandmother who loves an imbecile. I have read the letters, _et voilà, et voilà, et voilà!_" And she emptied her pockets of all the letters, minus the envelopes, that Fleurette had written. And, after one swift glance at the first letter, Aristide had no compunction in reading. They were all addressed to himself. They were very short, ill-written in a poor little uncultivated hand. But they all contained one message, that of her love for Aristide. Whatever illusions she may have had concerning Batterby had soon vanished. She knew, with the unerring instinct of woman, that he had betrayed and deserted her. Aristide's pious fraud had never deceived her for a second. Too gentle, too timid to let him know what was in her heart, she had written the secret patiently week after week, hoping every time that curiosity, or pity, or something--she knew not what--would induce him to open the idle letter, and wondering in her simple peasant's soul at the delicacy that caused him to refrain. Once she had boldly given him the envelope unclosed. [Illustration: HE READ IT, AND BLINKED IN AMAZEMENT] "She died for want of love, _parbleu_," said Aristide, "and there was mine quivering in my heart and trembling on my lips all the time.... She had _des yeux de pervenche_. Ah! _nom d'un chien!_ It is only with me that Providence plays such tricks." He walked to the window and looked out into the grey street. Presently I heard him murmuring the words of the old French song:-- Elle est morte en février; Pauvre Colinette! VII THE ADVENTURE OF THE MIRACLE You have seen how Aristide, by attaching himself to the Hôtel du Soleil et de l'Ecosse as a kind of glorified courier, had founded the Agence Pujol. As he, personally, was the Agence, and the Agence was he, it happened that when he was not in attendance at the hotel, the Agence faded into space, and when he made his appearance in the vestibule and hung up his placard by the bureau, the Agence at once burst again into the splendour of existence. Apparently the fitful career of the Agence Pujol lasted some years. Whenever a chance of more remunerative employment turned up, Aristide took it and dissolved the Agence. Whenever outrageous fortune chivied him with slings and arrows penniless to Paris, there was always the Agence waiting to be resuscitated. It was during one of these periodic flourishings of the Agence Pujol that Aristide met the Ducksmiths.