What was he to think of that letter? Was it dictated by real friendliness or polite dissimulation? At all events, further hesitation was out of the question. The time was very short. So Jansoulet made a brave effort, for Le Merquier frightened him sadly, and went to his office one morning. This strange Paris of ours, in its population and its varied aspects, seems like a map of the whole world. We find in the Marais narrow streets with old, carved, vermiculated doors, with overhanging gables, with balconies _en moucharabies_, which make one think of old Heidelberg. Faubourg Saint-Honore where it is broadest, near the Russian church with its white minarets and golden balls, recalls a bit of Moscow. On Montmartre there is a picturesque, crowded spot that is pure Algiers. Low, clean little houses, with their copper-plates on the doors, and their private gardens, stand in line along typical English streets between Neuilly and the Champs-Elysees; while the whole circuit of the apse of Saint-Sulpice, Rue Ferou, Rue Cassette, lying placidly in the shadow of the great towers, roughly paved, with knockers on the front doors, seems to have been transplanted from some pious provincial city,--Tours or Orleans for instance, in the neighborhood of the cathedral and the bishop's palace, where tall trees tower above the walls and sway to the music of the bells and the responses. There, in the vicinity of the Catholic club, of which he had been chosen honorary president, lived Maitre Le Merquier, advocate, Deputy for Lyon, man of business of all the great religious communities of France, and the man whom Hemerlingue, in pursuance of an idea of great profundity for that bulky individual, had intrusted with the legal affairs of his firm.