The unhappy curator, hearing a noise on the landing, opened the door and found it was little Léon, who, with a gold-braided _képi_ stuck on his head, was shouting "Vive la France" and hurling dusters and feather-brooms and Hippolyte's floor polish at imaginary foes. The child preferred this landing for playing soldiers to any other part of the house, and sometimes he would stray into the library. Monsieur Sariette was seized with the sudden suspicion that it was he who had taken the _Lucretius_ to use as a missile and he ordered him, in threatening tones, to give it back. The child denied that he had taken it, and Monsieur Sariette had recourse to cajolery. "Léon, if you bring me back the little red book, I will give you some chocolates." The child grew thoughtful; and in the evening, as Monsieur Sariette was going downstairs, he met Léon, who said: "There's the book!" And, holding out a much-torn picture-book called _The Story of Gribouille_, demanded his chocolates. A few days later the post brought Maurice the prospectus of an enquiry agency managed by an ex-employee at the Prefecture of Police; it promised celerity and discretion. He found at the address indicated a moustached gentleman morose and careworn, who demanded a deposit and promised to find the individual. The ex-police official soon wrote to inform him that very onerous investigations had been commenced and asked for fresh funds. Maurice gave him no more and resolved to carry on the search himself. Imagining, not without some likelihood, that the angel would associate with the wretched, seeing that he had no money, and with the exiled of all nations--like himself, revolutionaries--he visited the lodging-houses at St. Ouen, at la Chapelle, Montmartre, and the Barrière d'Italie. He sought him in the doss-houses, public-houses where they give you plates of tripe, and others where you can get a sausage for three sous; he searched for him in the cellars at the Market and at Père Momie's. Maurice visited the restaurants where nihilists and anarchists take their meals. There he came across men dressed as women, gloomy and wild-looking youths, and blue-eyed octogenarians who laughed like little children. He observed, asked questions, was taken for a spy, had a knife thrust into him by a very beautiful woman, and the very next day continued his search in beer-houses, lodging-houses, houses of ill-fame, gambling-hells down by the fortifications, at the receivers of stolen goods, and among the "apaches." Seeing him thus pale, harassed, and silent, his mother grew worried. "We must find him a wife," she said. "It is a pity that Mademoiselle de la Verdelière has not a bigger fortune." Abbé Patouille did not hide his anxiety. "This child," he said, "is passing through a moral crisis."