When the editor-in-chief was in possession of the precious foot and
informed as to the train of intelligent deductions the boy had been
led to make, he was divided between the admiration he felt for such
detective cunning in a brain of a lad of sixteen years, and delight
at being able to exhibit, in the "morgue window" of his paper, the
left foot of the Rue Oberskampf.

"This foot," he cried, "will make a great headline."

Then, when he had confided the gruesome packet to the medical lawyer
attached to the journal, he asked the lad, who was shortly to become
famous as Rouletabille, what he would expect to earn as a general
reporter on the "Epoque"?

"Two hundred francs a month," the youngster replied modestly, hardly
able to breathe from surprise at the proposal.

"You shall have two hundred and fifty," said the editor-in-chief;
"only you must tell everybody that you have been engaged on the paper
for a month. Let it be quite understood that it was not you but the
'Epoque' that discovered the left foot of the Rue Oberskampf. Here,
my young friend, the man is nothing, the paper everything."

Having said this, he begged the new reporter to retire, but before
the youth had reached the door he called him back to ask his name.
The other replied:

"Joseph Josephine."