The man who spoke thus falteringly was a little fellow in white gaiters, with an albino's face and scanty hair that stood erect in bunches. But that tactless friend's interruption simply furnished Le Merquier with a pretext for an immediate and natural transition. A hideous smile parted his flabby lips. "The honorable Monsieur Sarigue refers to the _Caisse Territoriale_; we proceed to answer him." The Paganetti den of thieves seemed to be, in truth, very familiar to him. In a few concise, keen words he threw light into the inmost depths of that dark lair, pointed out all the snares, all the pitfalls, the windings, the trap-doors, like a guide waving his torch above the underground dungeons of some hideous _in pace_. He spoke of the pretended quarries, the railroads on paper, the imaginary steamboats, vanished in their own smoke. The ghastly desert of Taverna was not forgotten, nor the old Genoese tower that served as an office for the Maritime Agency. But the detail that rejoiced the heart of the Chamber above all else was the description of a burlesque ceremonial organized by the Governor for driving a tunnel through Monte-Rotondo,--a gigantic undertaking still in the air, postponed from year to year, requiring millions of money and thousands of arms, which had been inaugurated with great pomp a week before the election. The report described the affair comically, the blow of the pick delivered by the candidate on the flank of the great mountain covered with primeval forests, the prefect's speech, the blessing of the standards amid shouts of "Vive Bernard Jansoulet!" and two hundred workmen going to work at once, working day and night for a week, and then--as soon as the election was over--abandoning the piles of broken rock heaped around an absurd excavation, an additional place of refuge for the redoubtable prowlers in the thickets. The trick was played. After extorting money so long from the shareholders, the _Caisse Territoriale_ had been made to serve as a means of capturing the votes of the electors,--"And now, Messieurs, here is one last detail with which I might well have begun, in order to spare you the distressing story of this electoral burlesque. I learn that a judicial inquiry into the Corsican concern has been opened this very day, and that a searching expert examination of its books will very probably lead to one of those financial scandals, too frequent, alas! in our day, in which you will not, for the honor of this Chamber, permit one of your members to be involved."