“Till our next meeting, very soon,” said Jacques Collin.

On turning round, Trompe-la-Mort saw the public prosecutor sitting at his table, his head resting on his hands.

“Do you mean that you can save the Comtesse de Serizy from going mad?” asked Monsieur de Granville.

“In five minutes,” said Jacques Collin.

“And you can give me all those ladies’ letters?”

“Have you read the three?”

“Yes,” said the magistrate vehemently, “and I blush for the women who wrote them.”

“Well, we are now alone; admit no one, and let us come to terms,” said Jacques Collin.

“Excuse me, Justice must first take its course.  Monsieur Camusot has instructions to seize your aunt.”

“He will never find her,” said Jacques Collin.

“Search is to be made at the Temple, in the shop of a demoiselle Paccard who superintends her shop.”

“Nothing will be found there but rags, costumes, diamonds, uniforms——­However, it will be as well to check Monsieur Camusot’s zeal.”

Monsieur de Granville rang, and sent an office messenger to desire Monsieur Camusot to come and speak with him.

“Now,” said he to Jacques Collin, “an end to all this!  I want to know your recipe for curing the Countess.”

“Monsieur le Comte,” said the convict very gravely, “I was, as you know, sentenced to five years’ penal servitude for forgery.  But I love my liberty.—­This passion, like every other, had defeated its own end, for lovers who insist on adoring each other too fondly end by quarreling.  By dint of escaping and being recaptured alternately, I have served seven years on the hulks.  So you have nothing to remit but the added terms I earned in quod—­I beg pardon, in prison.  I have, in fact, served my time, and till some ugly job can be proved against me, —­which I defy Justice to do, or even Corentin—­I ought to be reinstated in my rights as a French citizen.

“What is life if I am banned from Paris and subject to the eye of the police?  Where can I go, what can I do?  You know my capabilities.  You have seen Corentin, that storehouse of treachery and wile, turn ghastly pale before me, and doing justice to my powers.—­That man has bereft me of everything; for it was he, and he alone, who overthrew the edifice of Lucien’s fortunes, by what means and in whose interest I know not.—­Corentin and Camusot did it all——­”

“No recriminations,” said Monsieur de Granville; “give me the facts.”

“Well, then, these are the facts.  Last night, as I held in my hand the icy hand of that dead youth, I vowed to myself that I would give up the mad contest I have kept up for twenty years past against society at large.