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He held out a hand invitingly towards Babette, but she merely made a grimace at him and retired backwards. Patoux smiled benevolently. "She does not like strangers," he explained. "Good very good! That is right! Little girls should always run away from strangers, especially strangers of my sex," observed Cazeau with a sniggering laugh "And do these dear children go to school?"
"So has she!" echoed Midon, opening his eyes a little wider "Then what do you suppose? "Just this," said Patoux, emphasizing his words by marking them out with a fat thumb on the palm of the other hand "That Cazeau was the villain of the piece as they say in the theatres, and that she has punished him for his villainy.
"I said 'ONLY', Monsieur! Make the best of it!" answered Patoux, sticking his pipe into his mouth again, and resuming his smoke with undisturbed tranquillity. Cazeau hummed and hawed, he was irritated yet vaguely amused too at the singular self-assertion of these common folk who presumed to take their moral measurement of an Archbishop!
The next day a telegram was despatched from the Archbishop of Rouen to Monsignor Moretti at the Vatican: "Claude Cazeau visited Hotel Poitiers last night, but has since mysteriously disappeared. Every search and enquiry being made. Strongly suspect foul play." November was now drawing to a close, and St.
Ah,'tis a sad sight to see her now poor Marguerite Valmond!" "Ha!" cried Henri suddenly, pointing a grimy finger at Cazeau "Why did you jump? Did something hurt you?" Cazeau had indeed "jumped," as Henri put it, that is, he had sprung up from his chair suddenly and as suddenly sat down again with an air of impatience and discomfort.
Ah, yes, a good man! but ignorant alas! very ignorant!" Papa Patoux brought his eyes down from the ceiling and fixed them enquiringly on Cazeau.
He had then confronted him with Claude Cazeau, the secretary of the Archbishop of Rouen, and Cazeau had given a clear and concise account of the whole matter, stating that the child, Fabien Doucet, had been known in Rouen since his babyhood as a helpless cripple, and that after Cardinal Bonpre had prayed over him and laid hands on him, he had been miraculously cured, and was now to be seen running about the city as strong and straight as any other healthy child.
And will you believe me, the Archbishop of Rouen himself took the trouble to walk into the market-place and assure her she was a wicked woman, that she had taught her boy to play the cripple in order to excite pity, and I believe he thinks she is concerned in the strange disappearance of his clerk, Claude Cazeau.
During the time that matters were thus pending in Rome, Claude Cazeau, well satisfied with himself, and the importance of being entrusted with a special message from the Vatican to the Archbishop of Rouen, returned to the Normandy capital with many ambitious speculations rife in his brain, and schemes for improving the position of confidence with which he had, by the merest chance, and the fluctuations of the Pope's hunxour, been suddenly thrust.
There was something in it more than common, and Cazeau decided that he would suggest a close enquiry being made on this point. Crossing the square opposite the Hotel Poitiers, he hesitated before turning the corner of the street which led towards the avenue where the Archbishop's house was situated.
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