concerning every family or individual whose life is under suspicion, or whose actions are of a doubtful character.  It knows every circumstance of their delinquencies.  This universal register and account of consciences is as accurately kept as the register of the Bank of France and its accounts of fortunes.  Just as the Bank notes the slightest delay in payment, gauges every credit, takes stock of every capitalist, and watches their proceedings, so does the police weigh and measure the honesty of each citizen.  With it, as in a Court of Law, innocence has nothing to fear; it has no hold on anything but crime.

However high the rank of a family, it cannot evade this social providence.

And its discretion is equal to the extent of its power.  This vast mass of written evidence compiled by the police—­reports, notes, and summaries—­an ocean of information, sleeps undisturbed, as deep and calm as the sea.  Some accident occurs, some crime or misdemeanor becomes aggressive,—­then the law refers to the police, and immediately, if any documents bear on the suspected criminal, the judge is informed.  These records, an analysis of his antecedents, are merely side-lights, and unknown beyond the walls of the Palais de Justice.  No legal use can be made of them; Justice is informed by them, and takes advantage of them; but that is all.  These documents form, as it were, the inner lining of the tissue of crimes, their first cause, which is hardly ever made public.  No jury would accept it; and the whole country would rise up in wrath if excerpts from those documents came out in the trial at the Assizes.  In fact, it is the truth which is doomed to remain in the well, as it is everywhere and at all times.  There is not a magistrate who, after twelve years’ experience in Paris, is not fully aware that the Assize Court and the police authorities keep the secret of half these squalid atrocities, or who does not admit that half the crimes that are committed are never punished by the law.

If the public could know how reserved the employes of the police are —­who do not forget—­they would reverence these honest men as much as they do Cheverus.  The police is supposed to be astute, Machiavellian; it is, in fact most benign.  But it hears every passion in its paroxysms, it listens to every kind of treachery, and keeps notes of all.  The police is terrible on one side only.  What it does for justice it does no less for political interests; but in these it is as ruthless and as one-sided as the fires of the Inquisition.

“Put this aside,” said the lawyer, replacing the notes in their cover; “this is a secret between the police and the law.  The judge will estimate its value, but Monsieur and Madame Camusot must know nothing of it.”

“As if I needed telling that!” said his wife.

“Lucien is guilty,” he went on; “but of what?”

“A man who is the favorite of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, of the Comtesse de Serizy, and loved by Clotilde de Grandlieu, is not guilty,” said Amelie.  “The other must be answerable for everything.”