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On reaching Corentin's house, Bruno, the confidential servant, who knew Peyrade, said: "Monsieur is gone away." "For a long time?" "For ten days." "Where?" "I don't know. "Good God, I am losing my wits! I ask him where as if we ever told them " thought he.
This business was exceedingly important in itself, apart from its consequences. If it were not the Baron who had betrayed Peyrade, who could have had any interest in seeing the Prefet of Police? From Corentin's point of view it seemed suspicious. Were there any traitors among his men? And as he went to bed, he wondered what Peyrade, too, was considering.
He was careful to make a copy of this letter, and an hour later, when, in Corentin's study, he was questioned as to the result of his night's reflections, he gave that great general, for all answer, the matrimonial resignation he had just despatched. "That will do," said Corentin. "But as for your position on the newspaper, you may perhaps have to keep it for a time.
Peyrade, happy at having discerned Corentin's superior abilities, had started him in his career by preparing a success for him. And Corentin at that time was hardly five-and-twenty. Corentin, who had been retained as one of the generals of whom the Minister of Police is the High Constable, still held under the Duc de Rovigo the high position he had filled under the Duke of Otranto.
At the hour when Peyrade was questioning Corentin's servant, Monsieur de Saint-Denis and Derville, seated in the Bordeaux coach, were studying each other in silence as they drove out of Paris.
"Good-bye, my dear fellow," said Jacques Collin in a low voice, and in Corentin's ear: "the length of three corpses parts you from me; we have measured swords, they are of the same temper and the same length. Let us treat each other with due respect; but I mean to be your equal, not your subordinate. Armed as you would be, it strikes me you would be too dangerous a general for your lieutenant.
The Baron of Nucingen, on recognizing the evidence of poison, and failing to find his seven hundred and fifty thousand francs, imagined that one of two persons whom he greatly disliked either Paccard or Europe was guilty of the crime. In his first impulse of rage he flew to the prefecture of police. This was a stroke of a bell that called up all Corentin's men.
He was careful not to tell the First Consul and Fouche how he himself had given them warning, by talking with Grevin within hearing of Michu, but he made the most of Corentin's reports and convinced Napoleon that the four gentlemen were sharers in the plot of Riviere and Polignac, with Michu for an accomplice. The prefect of police confirmed these assertions.
The meaning of this movement and Corentin's intentions were so evident that the hearts of the household sank within them; but this new anxiety was additional to another that was now martyrizing them; their eyes were fixed on the sandal-wood box! All the while the two agents were talking together they were each taking note of those eager looks.
This information, gracefully thrown in as a postscript, was evidently the return for the five thousand francs. The Baron was trying to guess Corentin's place in life, for he quite understood that the man was rather a master of spies than a spy himself; but Corentin remained to him as mysterious as an inscription is to an archaeologist when three-quarters of the letters are missing.
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