Jules Desmarets. He had spied upon the daily life of a most
inoffensive man, in order to detect his secrets,--secrets on which
depended the lives of three persons. He had brought upon himself a
relentless struggle, in which, although he had escaped with life three
times, he must inevitably succumb, because his death had been sworn
and would be compassed if all human means were employed upon it.
Monsieur de Maulincour could no longer escape his fate by even
promising to respect the mysterious life of these three persons,
because it was impossible to believe the word of a gentleman who had
fallen to the level of a police-spy; and for what reason? Merely to
trouble the respectable life of an innocent woman and a harmless old
man.

The letter itself was nothing to Auguste in comparison to the tender
reproaches of his grandmother. To lack respect to a woman! to spy upon
her actions without a right to do so! Ought a man ever to spy upon a
woman whom he loved?--in short, she poured out a torrent of those
excellent reasons which prove nothing; and they put the young baron,
for the first time in his life, into one of those great human furies
in which are born, and from which issue the most vital actions of a
man's life.

"Since it is war to the knife," he said in conclusion, "I shall kill
my enemy by any means that I can lay hold of."

The vidame went immediately, at Auguste's request, to the chief of the
private police of Paris, and without bringing Madame Jules' name or
person into the narrative, although they were really the gist of it,
he made the official aware of the fears of the family of Maulincour
about this mysterious person who was bold enough to swear the death of