"No, we will not stop here," said Pierre to himself, while yielding, in spite of himself, to the extraordinary authority that emanated from the old noble when he was in a certain state of concentrated irritation.--"I am to go to Monsieur le Comte's apartments and get my father," he said to the servant; "will you take me there?" As he followed the maître d'hôtel through the glass gallery which his father had passed through a quarter of an hour before, another person was on his way, by an interior passage, to that same room in which Landri was talking with Chaffin. It was the Marquis de Claviers. He wished to learn, and without loss of time, Landri's reasons for going to Quai de Béthune, and whether he had at last discovered a way to solve the mystery of the anonymous denunciation which had been a constant source of anxiety to him for so many days. Thus it was that he knocked at one door of the young man's smoking-room, at almost the same instant that Pierre entered at the other door. This simultaneous double appearance, which had the air of being concerted, almost extorted a shriek from the two occupants of the room, between whom a scene had just taken place almost more distressing than that between the marquis and Pierre. Their arrival brought about a terrible dénouement. At the moment that they entered, Chaffin was seated at a table. He had just laid aside a pen with which he had written upon an envelope before him the following address: "Monsieur le Marquis de Claviers-Grandchamp." He was about to rise. The sight of his son caused him to fall back upon his chair, and that of the marquis, the next instant, to spring up again. He retreated backward, so demoralized by terror that his legs gave way and he had to lean against the wall. M. de Claviers, thunderstruck himself by the presence of his former secretary, and of his son, whom he had just left, gazed at them both and at Landri. Then, addressing the latter,-- "I have to talk with you," he said, "when you have finished with these gentlemen." At that moment his eye fell on the envelope lying on the desk. He recognized his own name. He took it up and opened it. Chaffin had not had time to seal it, a circumstance which made more striking the exact parallel between that moment and another, when the betrayed husband had compelled the adulterine son to read the proof of their common shame. The envelope contained the three letters from Jaubourg to Madame de Claviers stolen by the tutor, and, on a separate sheet, these lines in his hand, written at Landri's dictation:-- "The wretch who, in a moment of insanity, sent an anonymous letter to M. le Marquis de Claviers-Grandchamp, restores to him the other papers mentioned in that letter, and, while asking his forgiveness, appeals to his generosity not to dishonor him in the eyes of his son."