And there are many things you would never think of which money cannot buy.
— You cannot buy good luck. So good police work is not done in this style.
Will you show yourself in a carriage with me?
We should be seen.
Chance is just as often for us as against us.”
“Really-truly?” said the Baron.
“Why, of course, sir.
A horseshoe picked up in the street led the chief of the police to the discovery of the infernal machine.
Well, if we were to go to-night in a hackney coach to Monsieur de Saint–Germain, he would not like to see you walk in any more than you would like to be seen going there.”
“Dat is true,” said the Baron.
“Ah, he is the greatest of the great! such another as the famous Corentin, Fouche’s right arm, who was, some say, his natural son, born while he was still a priest; but that is nonsense. Fouche knew how to be a priest as he knew how to be a Minister.
Well, you will not get this man to do anything for you, you see, for less than ten thousand-franc notes — think of that. — But he will do the job, and do it well.
Neither seen nor heard, as they say.
I ought to give Monsieur de Saint–Germanin notice, and he will fix a time for your meeting in some place where no one can see or hear, for it is a dangerous game to play policeman for private interests.
Still, what is to be said?
He is a good fellow, the king of good fellows, and a man who has undergone much persecution, and for having saving his country too! — like me, like all who helped to save it.”
“Vell den, write and name de happy day,” said the Baron, smiling at his humble jest.
“And Monsieur le Baron will allow me to drink his health?” said Contenson, with a manner at once cringing and threatening.
“Shean,” cried the Baron to the gardener, “go and tell Chorge to sent me one twenty francs, and pring dem to me ——”
“Still, Monsieur le Baron, if you have no more information than you have just given me, I doubt whether the great man can be of any use to you.”
“I know off oders!” replied the Baron with a cunning look.
“I have the honor to bid you good-morning, Monsieur le Baron,” said Contenson, taking the twenty-franc piece. “I shall have the honor of calling again to tell Georges where you are to go this evening, for we never write anything in such cases when they are well managed.”
“It is funny how sharp dese rascals are!” said the Baron to himself; “it is de same mit de police as it is in buss’niss.”
When he left the Baron, Contenson went quietly from the Rue Saint–Lazare to the Rue Saint–Honore, as far as the Cafe David. He looked in through the windows, and saw an old man who was known there by the name of le Pere Canquoelle.
The Cafe David, at the corner of the Rue de la Monnaie and the Rue Saint–Honore, enjoyed a certain celebrity during the first thirty years of the century, though its fame was limited to the quarter known as that of the Bourdonnais.
Here certain old retired merchants, and large shopkeepers still in trade, were wont to meet — the Camusots, the Lebas, the Pilleraults, the Popinots, and a few house-owners like little old Molineux.
Now and again old Guillaume might be seen there, coming from the Rue du Colombier.
Politics were discussed in a quiet way, but cautiously, for the opinions of the Cafe David were liberal.
The gossip of the neighborhood was repeated, men so urgently feel the need of laughing at each other!
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.
Sometimes this old fellow, whose guilelessness was the subject of much laughter to the customers, would disappear for a month or two; but his absence never surprised anybody, and was always attributed to his infirmities or his great age, for he looked more than sixty in 1811.
“What has become of old Canquoelle?” one or another would ask of the manageress at the desk.
“I quite expect that one fine day we shall read in the advertisement-sheet that he is dead,” she would reply.
Old Canquoelle bore a perpetual certificate of his native province in his accent. He spoke of une estatue (a statue), le peuble (the people), and said ture for turc.
His name was that of a tiny estate called les Canquoelles, a word meaning cockchafer in some districts, situated in the department of Vaucluse, whence he had come.
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.
The old man wore shoes with cut-steel buckles, silk stockings with stripes round the leg, alternately blue and white, corded silk knee-breeches with oval buckles cut to match those on his shoes.
A white embroidered waistcoat, an old coat of olive-brown with metal buttons, and a shirt with a flat-pleated frill completed his costume.
In the middle of the shirt-frill twinkled a small gold locket, in which might be seen, under glass, a little temple worked in hair, one of those pathetic trifles which give men confidence, just as a scarecrow frightens sparrows. Most men, like other animals, are frightened or reassured by trifles.
Old Canquoelle’s breeches were kept in place by a buckle which, in the fashion of the last century, tightened them across the stomach; from the belt hung on each side a short steel chain, composed of several finer chains, and ending in a bunch of seals.
His white neckcloth was fastened behind by a small gold buckle.
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.
A small pigtail tied with a ribbon had traced a semicircle on the back of his coat, the greasy mark being hidden by powder.
If you looked no further than the most conspicuous feature of his face, a nose covered with excrescences red and swollen enough to figure in a dish of truffles, you might have inferred that the worthy man had an easy temper, foolish and easy-going, that of a perfect gaby; and you would have been deceived, like all at the Cafe David, where no one had ever remarked the studious brow, the sardonic mouth, and the cold eyes of this old man, petted by his vices, and as calm as Vitellius, whose imperial and portly stomach reappeared in him palingenetically, so to speak.
In 1816 a young commercial traveler named Gaudissart, who frequented the Cafe David, sat drinking from eleven o’clock till midnight with a half-pay officer.
He was so rash as to discuss a conspiracy against the Bourbons, a rather serious plot then on the point of execution.
There was no one to be seen in the cafe but Pere Canquoelle, who seemed to be asleep, two waiters who were dozing, and the accountant at the desk.
Within four-and-twenty hours Gaudissart was arrested, the plot was discovered.