That awful house, you were saying. Where and what is that awful house of
which you speak?"

"The place kept by citizen Leridan, just by Bassin de l'Ourcq," the
woman murmured. "You know it, citizen."

Chauvelin nodded. He was beginning to understand.

"Well, now, tell me," he said, with that bland patience which had so oft
served him in good stead in his unavowable profession. "Tell me. Last
year citizen Marat adopted--we'll say adopted--a child, whom he placed
in the Leridans' house on the Pantin road. Is that correct?"

"That is just how it is, citizen. And I--"

"One moment," he broke in somewhat more sternly, as the woman's
garrulity was getting on his nerves. "As you say, I know the Leridans'
house. I have had cause to send children there myself. Children of
aristos or of fat bourgeois, whom it was our duty to turn into good
citizens. They are not pampered there, I imagine," he went on drily;
"and if citizen Marat sent his--er--adopted son there, it was not with a
view to having him brought up as an aristo, what?"

"The child was not to be brought up at all," the woman said gruffly. "I
have often heard citizen Marat say that he hoped the brat would prove a
thief when he grew up, and would take to alcoholism like a duck takes to
water."

"And you know nothing of the child's parents?"