“Your innkeeper is the living record of every incident; he does the work of the police without suspecting it.  A government should maintain two hundred spies at most, for in a country like France there are ten millions of simple-minded informers.—­However, we need not trust to this report; though even in this little town something would be known about the twelve hundred thousand francs sunk in paying for the Rubempre estate.  We will not stop here long——­”

“I hope not!” Derville put in.

“And this is why,” added Corentin; “I have hit on the most natural way of extracting the truth from the mouth of the Sechard couple.  I rely upon you to support, by your authority as a lawyer, the little trick I shall employ to enable you to hear a clear and complete account of their affairs.—­After dinner we shall set out to call on Monsieur Sechard,” said Corentin to the innkeeper’s wife.  “Have beds ready for us, we want separate rooms.  There can be no difficulty ’under the stars.’”

“Oh, monsieur,” said the woman, “we invented the sign.”

“The pun is to be found in every department,” said Corentin; “it is no monopoly of yours.”

“Dinner is served, gentlemen,” said the innkeeper.

“But where the devil can that young fellow have found the money?  Is the anonymous writer accurate?  Can it be the earnings of some handsome baggage?” said Derville, as they sat down to dinner.

“Ah, that will be the subject of another inquiry,” said Corentin.  “Lucien de Rubempre, as the Duc de Chaulieu tells me, lives with a converted Jewess, who passes for a Dutch woman, and is called Esther van Bogseck.”

“What a strange coincidence!” said the lawyer.  “I am hunting for the heiress of a Dutchman named Gobseck—­it is the same name with a transposition of consonants.”

“Well,” said Corentin, “you shall have information as to her parentage on my return to Paris.”

An hour later, the two agents for the Grandlieu family set out for La Verberie, where Monsieur and Madame Sechard were living.

Never had Lucien felt any emotion so deep as that which overcame him at La Verberie when comparing his own fate with that of his brother-in-law.  The two Parisians were about to witness the same scene that had so much struck Lucien a few days since.  Everything spoke of peace and abundance.

At the hour when the two strangers were arriving, a party of four persons were being entertained in the drawing-room of La Verberie:  the cure of Marsac, a young priest of five-and-twenty, who, at Madame Sechard’s request, had become tutor to her little boy Lucien; the country doctor, Monsieur Marron; the Maire of the commune; and an old colonel, who grew roses on a plot of land opposite to La Verberie on the other side of the road.  Every evening during the winter these persons came to play an artless game of boston for centime points, to borrow the papers, or return those they had finished.