Though Rochefort pretended to know nothing of politics, his acute mind told him at once a secret hidden from others. Sartines belonged to the Dubarry faction. He read it at once in the remark and the tone in which it was made. Sartines moved through the circles of the Court, mysterious, secretive, professing no politics, yet with his thumb in every pie, and sometimes his whole hand. He was Fouché with the aristocratic particle attached—a policeman and a noble rolled into one. With the genius of Mascarille for intrigue, of Tartuffe for hypocrisy, acting now with the feigned stupidity of a Sganarelle, and always ready to pounce with the pitilessness of a tiger, this extraordinary man exercised a power in the Court of Louis XV., equalled only by the power of the grey cardinal in the time of Richelieu—with this difference—he was feared less, on account of his assumed bonhomie, an attribute that made him even more dangerous than _son éminence gris_. He stood now with his hands behind his back, leaning slightly forward, his lips pursed, and his eyes upon the minuet that had just formed like a coloured flower crystallized from the surrounding atmosphere by the strains of Lully. “Ah,” said the Minister of Police, catching sight of a familiar figure, “so the Comte Camus is among the dancers. He came with you to-night?” “Yes; we arrived in the same carriage.” “Then take care,” said Sartines, “that you do not end your life in the same carriage.” “Pardon!” “The carriage that takes men to the Place de la Grève.” “Monsieur!” cried Rochefort. “It is my joke; yet, all the same, a joke may have a warning in it. Rochefort, beware of that man.” “Of Comte Camus?” “Yes.” “And why?” “_Mordieu_, why! He is a poisoner—that’s all.” “A poisoner!” “Precisely. He poisoned his uncle with a plate of soup, he poisoned his wife with a pot of rouge, and he would poison me with all his heart if he could get into my kitchen. You ask me how I know all this? I know it. Yet I cannot touch him because my evidence is not as complete as my knowledge. But the rope is ready for him, and he will fall as surely as my name is Sartines, for he is an expert in the art, and my eye is always upon him.” Rochefort, who had recovered from his shock, laughed. He did not entirely believe Sartines; besides, his attention was distracted from the thought of Camus by a face. “Who is that lady seated in the alcove beside Madame de Courcelles?” asked he. De Sartines turned. “That?” said he. “Why, it is La Fleur de Martinique. How is it possible that you do not know her?” “I have been away from Paris for two months. She must have bloomed in my absence, this flower of Martinique. Her name, my dear Sartines? I am burning to know her name.” “Mademoiselle Fontrailles. But beware of her, Rochefort; she is even more dangerous than Camus.” “Why, does she poison people?”