On reaching Corentin’s house, Bruno, the confidential servant, who knew Peyrade, said: 

“Monsieur is gone away.”

“For a long time?”

“For ten days.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.

“Good God, I am losing my wits!  I ask him where—­as if we ever told them——­” thought he.

A few hours before the moment when Peyrade was to be roused in his garret in the Rue Saint-Georges, Corentin, coming in from his country place at Passy, had made his way to the Duc de Grandlieu’s, in the costume of a retainer of a superior class.  He wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at his button-hole.  He had made up a withered old face with powdered hair, deep wrinkles, and a colorless skin.  His eyes were hidden by tortoise-shell spectacles.  He looked like a retired office-clerk.  On giving his name as Monsieur de Saint-Denis, he was led to the Duke’s private room, where he found Derville reading a letter, which he himself had dictated to one of his agents, the “number” whose business it was to write documents.  The Duke took Corentin aside to tell him all he already knew.  Monsieur de Saint-Denis listened coldly and respectfully, amusing himself by studying this grand gentleman, by penetrating the tufa beneath the velvet cover, by scrutinizing this being, now and always absorbed in whist and in regard for the House of Grandlieu.

“If you will take my advice, monsieur,” said Corentin to Derville, after being duly introduced to the lawyer, “we shall set out this very afternoon for Angouleme by the Bordeaux coach, which goes quite as fast as the mail; and we shall not need to stay there six hours to obtain the information Monsieur le Duc requires.  It will be enough—­if I have understood your Grace—­to ascertain whether Monsieur de Rubempre’s sister and brother-in-law are in a position to give him twelve hundred thousand francs?” and he turned to the Duke.

“You have understood me perfectly,” said the Duke.

“We can be back again in four days,” Corentin went on, addressing Derville, “and neither of us will have neglected his business long enough for it to suffer.”

“That was the only difficulty I was about to mention to his Grace,” said Derville.  “It is now four o’clock.  I am going home to say a word to my head-clerk, and pack my traveling-bag, and after dinner, at eight o’clock, I will be——­But shall we get places?” he said to Monsieur de Saint-Denis, interrupting himself.

“I will answer for that,” said Corentin.  “Be in the yard of the Chief Office of the Messageries at eight o’clock.  If there are no places, they shall make some, for that is the way to serve Monseigneur le Duc de Grandlieu.”

“Gentlemen,” said the Duke most graciously, “I postpone my thanks——­”

Corentin and the lawyer, taking this as a dismissal, bowed, and withdrew.

At the hour when Peyrade was questioning Corentin’s servant, Monsieur de Saint-Denis and Derville, seated in the Bordeaux coach, were studying each other in silence as they drove out of Paris.