“What! not with all your means?” cried Tantaine, with a sneer.
“Laugh at me as much as you like; but out of the thirty servants in the Champdoce establishment, not one has been there more than ten years. Nor could I anywhere lay my hands upon one who had been in the Duke’s service in his youth. Once, however, as I was in the wineshop in the Rue de Varennes, I quite by chance heard allusion made to a woman who had been in the service of the Duke twenty-five years ago, and who was now in receipt of a small allowance from him. This woman was Caroline Schimmel. I easily found out her address, and set a watch on her.”
“And of what use will she be to you?”
“Very little, I fear. And yet the allowance looks as if she had at one time done something out of the way for her employers. Can it be that she has any knowledge of the birth of this natural child?”
“I don’t think much of your idea,” returned Tantaine carelessly.
“Since then,” continued Perpignan, “the Duke has never put in an appearance in my office.”
“But how about Catenac?”
“I have seen him three times.”
“Has he told you nothing more? Do you not even know in which hospital the child was placed?”
“No; and on my last visit I plainly told him that I was getting sick of all this mystery; and he said that he himself was tired, and was sorry that he had ever meddled in the affair.”