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A poor young lady of the elder branch of the Peyrades, who owned the little estate of la Peyrade, for we ourselves are Peyrades of Canquoelle, but the two branches inherit from one another, well, this young lady married, six years before the Revolution, a barrister who, after the fashion of the times, was Voltairean, that is to say, an unbeliever, or, if you choose, a deist.

This cafe, like all cafes for that matter, had its eccentric character in the person of the said Pere Canquoelle, who had been regular in his attendance there since 1811, and who seemed to be so completely in harmony with the good folks who assembled there, that they all talked politics in his presence without reserve.

Contenson went into the cafe, asked for a glass of brandy, and did not look at Canquoelle, who sat reading the papers; but when he had gulped down the brandy, he took out the Baron's gold piece, and called the waiter by rapping three short raps on the table.

If the venerable Pere Canquoelle he was called so in the house lived on in the Rue des Moineaux, on a fourth floor, you may depend on it he had found some peculiarity in the arrangement of the premises which favored the practice of his terrible profession.

At last every one had fallen into the habit of calling him Canquoelle, instead of des Canquoelles, and the old man took no offence, for in his opinion the nobility had perished in 1793; and besides, the land of les Canquoelles did not belong to him; he was a younger son's younger son. Nowadays old Canquoelle's costume would look strange, but between 1811 and 1820 it astonished no one.

"Bless me, Papa Peyrade! and you still care enough for women to ? But you are deceiving me. I am sixty myself, and I can do without 'em. However, if the case is as you state it, I quite understand that you should have found it necessary to get yourself up as a foreigner to indulge your fancy." "You can understand that Peyrade, or old Canquoelle of the Rue des Moineaux "

"What a gallows-bird!" said Pere Canquoelle to his neighbor Monsieur Pillerault. "Pshaw!" said Monsieur Camusot to all the company, for he alone had expressed no astonishment, "it is Contenson, Louchard's right-hand man, the police agent we employ in business. The rascals want to nab some one who is hanging about perhaps."

"In the police force since 1778, having come to Paris from Avignon two years previously. "Without money or character; possessed of certain State secrets. "Lives in the Rue des Moineaux under the name of Canquoelle, the name of a little estate where his family resides in the department of Vaucluse; very respectable people. "Was lately inquired for by a grand-nephew named Theodore de la Peyrade.

There were garret rooms above the fourth floor, one of them a kitchen, and the other a bedroom for Pere Canquoelle's only servant, a Fleming named Katt, formerly Lydie's wet-nurse. Old Canquoelle had taken one of the outside rooms for his bedroom, and the other for his study. The study ended at the party-wall, a very thick one.

Finally, on his snowy and powdered hair, he still, in 1816, wore the municipal cocked hat which Monsieur Try, the President of the Law Courts, also used to wear. But Pere Canquoelle had recently substituted for this hat, so dear to old men, the undignified top-hat, which no one dares to rebel against. The good man thought he owed so much as this to the spirit of the age.