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“What is your will, messeigneurs?” said the facetious editor, seeing his two friends and imitating Frederic Lemaitre.

Theodore Gaillard, formerly a wit, had ended by becoming a stupid man in consequence of remaining constantly in one centre,–a moral phenomenon frequently to be observed in Paris. His principal method of conversation consisted in sowing his speeches with sayings taken from plays then in vogue and pronounced in imitation of well-known actors.

“We have come to blague,” said Leon.

“‘Again, young men'” (Odry in the Saltimbauques).

“Well, this time, we’ve got him, sure,” said Gaillard’s other visitor, apparently by way of conclusion.

“ARE you sure of it, pere Fromenteau?” asked Gaillard. “This it the eleventh time you’ve caught him at night and missed him in the morning.”

“How could I help it? I never saw such a debtor! he’s a locomotive; goes to sleep in Paris and wakes up in the Seine-et-Oise. A safety lock I call him.” Seeing a smile on Gaillard’s face he added: “That’s a saying in our business. Pinch a man, means arrest him, lock him up. The criminal police have another term. Vidoeq said to his man, ‘You are served’; that’s funnier, for it means the guillotine.”

A nudge from Bixiou made Gazonal all eyes and ears.

“Does monsieur grease my paws?” asked Fromenteau of Gaillard, in a threatening but cool tone.

“‘A question that of fifty centimes'” (Les Saltimbauques), replied the editor, taking out five francs and offering them to Fromenteau.

“And the rapscallions?” said the man.

“What rapscallions?” asked Gaillard.

“Those I employ,” replied Fromenteau calmly.

“Is there a lower depth still?” asked Bixiou.

“Yes, monsieur,” said the spy. “Some people give us information without knowing they do so, and without getting paid for it. I put fools and ninnies below rapscallions.”

“They are often original, and witty, your rapscallions!” said Leon.

“Do you belong to the police?” asked Gazonal, eying with uneasy curiosity the hard, impassible little man, who was dressed like the third clerk in a sheriff’s office.

“Which police do you mean?” asked Fromenteau.

“There are several?”

“As many as five,” replied the man. “Criminal, the head of which was Vidoeq; secret police, which keeps an eye on the other police, the head of it being always unknown; political police,–that’s Fouche’s. Then there’s the police of Foreign Affairs, and finally, the palace police (of the Emperor, Louis XVIII., etc.), always squabbling with that of the quai Malaquais. It came to an end under Monsieur Decazes. I belonged to the police of Louis XVIII.; I’d been in it since 1793, with that poor Contenson.”

The four gentlemen looked at each other with one thought: “How many heads he must have brought to the scaffold!”

“Now-a-days, they are trying to get on without us. Folly!” continued the little man, who began to seem terrible. “Since 1830 they want honest men at the prefecture! I resigned, and I’ve made myself a small vocation by arresting for debt.”

“He is the right arm of the commercial police,” said Gaillard in Bixiou’s ear, “but you can never find out who pays him most, the debtor or the creditor.”

“The more rascally a business is, the more honor it needs. I’m for him who pays me best,” continued Fromenteau addressing Gaillard. “You want to recover fifty thousand francs and you talk farthings to your means of action. Give me five hundred francs and your man is pinched to- night, for we spotted him yesterday!”

“Five hundred francs for you alone!” cried Theodore Gaillard.

“Lizette wants a shawl,” said the spy, not a muscle of his face moving. “I call her Lizette because of Beranger.”

“You have a Lizette, and you stay in such a business!” cried the virtuous Gazonal.

“It is amusing! People may cry up the pleasures of hunting and fishing as much as they like but to stalk a man in Paris is far better fun.”

“Certainly,” said Gazonal, reflectively, speaking to himself, “they must have great talent.”

“If I were to enumerate the qualities which make a man remarkable in our vocation,” said Fromenteau, whose rapid glance had enabled him to fathom Gazonal completely, “you’d think I was talking of a man of genius. First, we must have the eyes of a lynx; next, audacity (to tear into houses like bombs, accost the servants as if we knew them, and propose treachery–always agreed to); next, memory, sagacity, invention (to make schemes, conceived rapidly, never the same–for spying must be guided by the characters and habits of the persons spied upon; it is a gift of heaven); and, finally, agility, vigor. All these facilities and qualities, monsieur, are depicted on the door of the Gymnase-Amoros as Virtue. Well, we must have them all, under pain of losing the salaries given us by the State, the rue de Jerusalem, or the minister of Commerce.”