He could not refrain from smiling, so absurd did this hypothesis seem to him. Then he ran his eyes over the first lines of the article, and let escape him the word "Strange!..." and then the word "Odd..." and then the word "Amazing..." But without any particular display of emotion. Then he decided that it was time to stop sulking, and said: "You haven't read this article entitled: 'Cartouche is not dead,' Adolphe. It's a strange and amazing article." Marceline and Adolphe started violently and looked at one another in dismay. Theophrastus read: "Is Cartouche, then, not dead? For some days the police, with the greatest mystery which we however have penetrated, have been solely occupied with a series of strange crimes of which they have been forced to conceal the most curious side from the public. These crimes and _the manner in which their author escapes from the Police at the very moment at which they believe they have caught him_, recall point by point _the methods of the celebrated Cartouche_. If it were not a question of an affair as reprehensible as a series of crimes, one could even admire the art with which the model is imitated. As an official of the Prefecture of Police, whose name we do not give since he insisted on secrecy, said to us yesterday, 'He's the very spit of Cartouche!' So much so that the detectives no longer call the mysterious robber, on the track of whom they sometimes find themselves, anything but Cartouche! Moreover the authorities, with great secrecy but with considerable intelligence--for once we find no difficulty in admitting it--have placed in the hands of three of them a history of Cartouche edited by the Librarians of the National Library. They have decided, quite subtly, that the history of Cartouche should be useful to them, not only in the matter in hand, which consists in their preventing to-day the criminal eccentricities of the new Cartouche and in arresting the new Cartouche himself, but also that his story ought to form a part of the general instruction of all detectives. Indeed a rumour has come to our ears that M. Lepine, the Prefect of Police, has ordered several of the evening courses at the Prefecture to be devoted to the authentic history of the illustrious robber." "What do you think of that?" said Theophrastus with an air of amiable indulgence. "It's a regular farce. The journalists are queer beggars to try to stuff us with all this rubbish." Neither Adolphe nor Marceline smiled. In a somewhat shaky voice Marceline bade him go on reading. "The first crime of the new Cartouche, the crime at least with which the Police was first called on to occupy itself, does not present that aspect of horror which we find in some of the others. It is a romantic crime. Let us say at once that all the crimes of which we have cognisance and which are attributed to the new Cartouche, have been committed during the last fortnight and _always between eleven o'clock at night and four in the morning_."