At the same time we must give him the credit of being far more interested in the mystery of his personality than in the mystery of the treasures. He decided to postpone his search for them till he could definitely give a name to the personage who had been Theophrastus in 1721. To his mind this discovery, which was of chief interest to him, would be the key to all the rest. He was somewhat astonished by the sudden disappearance of what he called his "historical instinct." It had been lacking during the earlier part of his life; but it had revealed itself to him in the cellars of the Conciergerie with the suddenness and emphasis of a clap of thunder. For a while the Other (in his mind he called the great personage he had been in the eighteenth century the "Other") had taken possession of him. The Other had been so completely master of him that he had acted with the Other's hands and spoken with his voice. It was the Other who had found the document. It was the Other who had cried, "_Zounds! It's Straw Alley!_" It was the Other who had called _Simon the Auvergnat_ and then had vanished. Theophrastus did not know what had become of him. He sought in vain. He sounded himself, plumbing the depths of his being. Nothing! Theophrastus would not stand it. He had not been troubled all his life long by any unhealthy curiosity about the beginning or end of things; he had wasted no time on the mysteries of philosophy. He had shrugged his shoulders at their futility. But since the revelation of the extraordinary fact that a man sold rubber stamps in 1911 after burying treasures in 1721, he swore to go to the end of the business. He would know. He would know everything. His "historical instinct" seemed to have left him for the time being, he would hunt for it in books. He would assuredly end by finding out who was the mysterious personage who had been shut up in the Conciergerie in 1721 after having been betrayed on the First of April. Which First of April? That remained to discover.