The servant who opened the door to Landri was the old maître-d'hôtel who had carried the dying man's message the night before. Jaubourg's relations with him were very analogous to those of M. de Claviers with the Mauchaussées and their like. But the châtelain knew his men "plant and root," to use again one of his favorite expressions. They were of the soil, of the neighborhood of Grandchamp; their fathers and mothers doffed their caps on the road to the defunct marquis, as they called Landri's grandfather; whereas Joseph, Jaubourg's servant, had entered his service by chance, on the recommendation of the secretary of a club. He had become attached to his master, however, with the affection that shrewd servants conceive for bachelors. He had made himself a home there. His devotion was genuine, but to a master whom he could not replace. This sentiment, composed largely of selfishness, bore no resemblance whatever to the familiar and hereditarily feudal deference with which the marquis's retainers enveloped him. There was something of the confederate in Joseph, of the safe witness, who has entered into a tacit contract of discreet silence with a rich and independent Parisian. Jaubourg had never said a word or made a motion which authorized any person whomsoever, especially his servant, even to suspect the nature of the interest that Landri aroused in him; and yet it was with a semi-reproachful air that the wily and zealous Joseph greeted the young man. He had anticipated the ringing of the bell, a sign that he was watching for his arrival. "Ah! how much Monsieur would have liked to see Monsieur le Comte yesterday! To-day--" He compressed his lips and touched his forehead. "Will Monsieur le Comte allow me to ask him not to contradict Monsieur in anything? Monsieur was so sick last night! The head! the head! I was afraid he'd go mad! He's better since morning. But if Monsieur le Comte would like to speak with Monsieur le Docteur Chaffin, while I go to prepare Monsieur for his visit--" The son of the ex-tutor, who had been since the conversation of the preceding evening an object of such suspicion to Landri, occupied the room that Jaubourg, a gentleman of leisure, used for a study. A library of some size justified that title. It exhibited on its shelves the backs of rare volumes, which the collector had bought for the editions and for the bindings, and seldom opened. Pierre Chaffin had seated himself in front of a magnificent Riesener desk. The morocco top of that regal piece had certainly never before been used for such tasks as those in which he was engaged. He was correcting the proofs of a medical pamphlet, in order not to waste his time in the interval between his sittings by the bedside of the invalid, who, for his part, had written nothing at that desk, for many years, except notes accepting or declining invitations to dinner!