orders in calumniating Madame Desmarets to a person named Ida, whose
jealousy he roused in order to turn her vindictiveness upon us?"

"Ah, monsieur! in my anger I informed him about Madame Jules," said
Auguste.

"Monsieur!" cried the husband, keenly irritated.

"Oh, monsieur!" replied the baron, claiming silence by a gesture, "I
am prepared for all. You cannot tell me anything my own conscience has
not already told me. I am now expecting the most celebrated of all
professors of toxicology, in order to learn my fate. If I am destined
to intolerable suffering, my resolution is taken. I shall blow my
brains out."

"You talk like a child!" cried the vidame, horrified by the coolness
with which the baron said these words. "Your grandmother would die of
grief."

"Then, monsieur," said Jules, "am I to understand that there exist no
means of discovering in what part of Paris this extraordinary man
resides?"

"I think, monsieur," said the old vidame, "from what I have heard poor
Justin say, that Monsieur de Funcal lives at either the Portuguese or
the Brazilian embassy. Monsieur de Funcal is a nobleman belonging to
both those countries. As for the convict, he is dead and buried. Your
persecutor, whoever he is, seems to me so powerful that it would be
well to take no decisive measures until you are sure of some way of
confounding and crushing him. Act prudently and with caution, my dear