This Vine Street is a curious street, leading nowhere, little known, and so deserted, that the grass grows everywhere. It stretches out long and dreary, is hilly, muddy, scarcely paved, and full of holes, and looks much more like a wretched village lane than like a street belonging to Paris. No shops, only a few homes, but on the right and the left interminable walls, overtopped by lofty trees. “Ah! the place is well chosen for mysterious rendezvouses,” growled Goudar. “Too well chosen, I dare say; for we shall pick up no information here.” The carriage stopped before a small door, in a thick wall, which bore the traces of the two sieges in a number of places. “Here is No. 23,” said the driver; “but I see no house.” It could not be seen from the street; but, when they got in, Mr. Folgat and Goudar saw it, rising in the centre of an immense garden, simple and pretty, with a double porch, a slate roof, and newly-painted blinds. “Great God!” exclaimed the detective, “what a place for a gardener!” And M. Folgat felt so keenly the man’s ill-concealed desire, that he at once said,-- “If we save M. de Boiscoran, I am sure he will not keep this house.” “Let us go in,” cried the detective, in a voice which revealed all his intense desire to succeed. Unfortunately, Jacques de Boiscoran had spoken but too truly, when he said that no trace was left of former days. Furniture, carpets, all was new; and Goudar and M. Folgat in vain explored the four rooms down stairs, and the four rooms up stairs, the basement, where the kitchen was, and finally the garret. “We shall find nothing here,” declared the detective. “To satisfy my conscience, I shall come and spend an afternoon here; but now we have more important business. Let us go and see the neighbors!” There are not many neighbors in Vine Street. A teacher and a nurseryman, a locksmith and a liveryman, five or six owners of houses, and the inevitable keeper of a wine-shop and restaurant, these were the whole population. “We shall soon make the rounds,” said Goudar, after having ordered the coachman to wait for them at the end of the street. Neither the head master nor his assistants knew any thing. The nurseryman had heard it said that No. 23 belonged to an Englishman; but he had never seen him, and did not even know his name. The locksmith knew that he was called Francis Burnett. He had done some work for him, for which he had been well paid, and thus he had frequently seen him; but it was so long since, that he did not think he would recognize him. “We are unlucky,” said M. Folgat, after this visit.