As was only natural, tongues presently began to wag.  Soon it was common talk in Paris that M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour had disappeared from his home and that Madame was trying to put a bold face upon the occurrence.  There were surmises and there was gossip—­ oh! interminable and long-winded gossip!  Minute circumstances in connexion with M. le Marquis’s private life and Mme. la Marquise’s affairs were freely discussed in the cafes, the clubs and restaurants, and as no one knew the facts of the case, surmises soon became very wild.

On the third day of M. le Marquis’s disappearance Papa Mosenstein returned to Paris from Vichy, where he had just completed his annual cure.  He arrived at Rue de Grammont at three o’clock in the afternoon, demanded to see Mme. la Marquise at once, and then remained closeted with her in her apartment for over an hour.  After which he sent for the inspector of police of the section, with the result that that very same evening M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour was found locked up in an humble apartment on the top floor of a house in the Rue Daunou, not ten minutes’ walk from his own house.  When the police—­acting on information supplied to them by M. Mauruss Mosenstein—­forced their way into that apartment, they were horrified to find M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour there, tied hand and foot with cords to a chair, his likely calls for help smothered by a woollen shawl wound loosely round the lower part of his face.

He was half dead with inanition, and was conveyed speechless and helpless to his home in the Rue de Grammont, there, presumably, to be nursed back to health by Madame his wife.

5.

Now in all this matter, I ask you, Sir, who ran the greatest risk?  Why, I—­Hector Ratichon, of course—­Hector Ratichon, in whose apartment M. de Firmin-Latour was discovered in a position bordering on absolute inanition.  And the proof of this is, that that selfsame night I was arrested at my lodgings at Passy, and charged with robbery and attempted murder.

It was a terrible predicament for a respectable citizen, a man of integrity and reputation, in which to find himself; but Papa Mosenstein was both tenacious and vindictive.  His daughter, driven to desperation at last, and terrified that M. le Marquis had indeed been foully murdered by M. de Naquet, had made a clean breast of the whole affair to her father, and he in his turn had put the minions of the law in full possession of all the facts; and since M. le Comte de Naquet had vanished, leaving no manner of trace or clue of his person behind him, the police, needing a victim, fell back on an innocent man.  Fortunately, Sir, that innocence clear as crystal soon shines through every calumny.  But this was not before I had suffered terrible indignities and all the tortures which base ingratitude can inflict upon a sensitive heart.