"Let's follow him now as he followed us. Let's find out who this young aristocrat is that drops from the skies into other men's fights."
And the two ruffians, creeping along in the shadow of the walls, tracked de Brezé until he leaped into a cab, giving directions which they overheard. The listeners did not need to incur the expense of another cab.
René had failed to heed the warning of Naundorff regarding circumspection. Just from the arms of Amélie, he floated like one in a trance; his thoughts were all of love.
[Chapter V]
THE FIRST THREADS OF THE NET
The office of the Superintendent of Police, Baron Lecazes, was an apartment severely sumptuous and furnished in the purest Imperialistic style. The power of the great Napoleon, laid low forever after the ephemeral sway of the Hundred Days, lived still in art. How could the suite of Lecazes be furnished otherwise, when it had been the official headquarters of Fouché, Napoleon's chief minister, the "Great Second" in power and, perhaps, behind the throne's draperies, the "Great First." He had occupied it during the stirring period in which the power of the police department attained its zenith,—Fouché, the only man who in reality knew the history of the epoch.
Lecazes was said to have reaped the harvest of his predecessor's ingenious policy—tangled labyrinths of tunnels, secret passages, back stairways, hidden closets, dungeons wherein dangerous citizens kept gloomy vigils while gagged and fettered, awaiting presentation before the all-potent superintendent. There were chiffoniers and garde-robes whose compartments held every variety of disguises. Smothered voices, could they have become audible again, might have told of torture-galleries consummately fitted up, containing indented wheels, Austrian steel-blocks, English pricking-forks, Spanish weights and cords, Prussian metal helmets and other devices no less terrifying. The truth of these rumors cannot be vouched for but it is enough to say that they were disseminated by the Carbonari, whose society was then starting. It has also been said, perhaps rashly, that under the eye of Fouché there existed a chemical laboratory in which a turbaned doctor from the Orient, envoy from the Great Turk, concocted distillations of herbs which induced stupor, insanity or death. However legendary some of these statements may seem, however rash it may be to gainsay the erudite historians who give credit only to what is found in the records, it is well to recognize the fact that some of the most dramatic and highly significant happenings are among those of which all trace has been obliterated.
The private office of Lecazes was reached from the outside by an antechamber with apparently but one entry, that of the rear, leading to the hall and before which hung a green silk portière brocaded in yellow palms. The walls of the office were covered with green silk laid on in squares and retained in place by carved gilt-edged mahogany strips. The floor was a mosaic of rare and variegated woods which in their natural tints formed a Grecian fret encircling a serpent-locked head of Medusa. There were swan-formed sofas and chairs and stools of artistically wrought brass, depicting processions of nymphs with airy coiffures, slender necks and beribboned sandals, or groups of cupids bearing hymeneal torches. A splendid bronze railing surrounded the desk on which stood an inkstand with the figure of Laocoön struggling in the coils of serpents. The Laocoön and the Medusa, strongly suggestive of martyrdom and despair, could not be more fittingly placed. Above the baron's seat, a canopy overhung the portrait of the reigning king, Louis XVIII. Lecazes was seated and although many papers lay before him, he was not busy. His attitude was meditative, his head resting in the left hand, while his right fingered a silver pen tipped with steel. It would have been difficult to classify the quality of his meditation—to determine whether it was artful or idle. His face was keenly intelligent and in public it expressed an ingenious frankness, with an affability too unremitting to be sincere, and a smile half abstracted and half mellow, which, when in solitude was replaced by lines of astute and tenacious determination. It was the expression of a man who travels without deviation to his ends.
As superintendent of the restored monarch, he was impelled to display greater vigor than as the superintendent of the great Corsican. In the latter capacity he was guided by a superior genius; in the former he stood back of the throne to guard the government—including himself.