As soon as he reached the capital, he looked up M. Gaston Leroux, and recalled himself to the latter’s memory, telling him that, although he felt no particular liking for the life, which he considered rather a lazy one for a man who liked to be up and doing, he had decided to become a journalist. And he fairly demanded that his old acquaintance should at once give him a trial as a reporter. Leroux tried to turn the youth from his project. At last, tired of his persistent requests, the editor said: “Well, my lad, since you have nothing special to do just now, go and find the left foot of the body in the Rue Oberkampf.” And with these words, M. Leroux turned away, leaving poor Rouletabille standing there with half a dozen young reporters tittering around him. But the boy was not daunted in the least. He searched through the files of the paper and found out that the _Epoch_ was offering a large reward to the person who would bring to its office the foot which was missing from the mutilated body of a woman, which had been found in the Rue Oberkampf. The rest we know. In “The Mystery of the Yellow Room,” I have told how Rouletabille succeeded on this occasion, and in what manner there revealed itself to him his own singular calling--that of always beginning to reason a matter out from the point where others had finished. I have told, too, by what chance he was led one evening to the Elysee, where he inhaled as he passed by the perfume of the Lady in Black. He realized then that it was Mlle. Stangerson who had been his visitor at the school, and for whom he had been seeking so long. What more need I add? Why speak of the sensations which his knowledge as to the wearer of the perfume aroused in the heart of Rouletabille during the events at the Glandier, and, above all, after his trip to America? They may be easily guessed. How simple a thing now to understand his hesitations and his whims! The proofs brought by him from Cincinnati in regard to the child of the woman who had been Jean Roussel’s wife had been sufficiently explicit to awaken in his mind a suspicion that he himself might be that child, but not enough so to render him certain of the fact. However, his instinct drew him so strongly to the professor’s daughter that he could scarcely resist his longing to throw himself into her arms and press her to his heart and cry out to her: “You are my mother! you are my mother!”