"Ah!" said the pastor laughing; "it requires so little to attract my attention and to enable me to pass the time, that you would not wish to lose your time listening to such trifles."
"Well! be it so," said the citizen Desmarest, whose astonishment had reached its acme; "Good day, return to-morrow, I request of you."
Michel Perrin had scarcely closed the door of the cabinet, when the chief of division rang and obtained the immediate attendance of one of the mouchards or detectives who were in the ante-chamber.
"Follow the man in the brown great-coat who has just left me," said he; "follow him throughout the day, and come to report to me to-morrow morning."
Until late in the evening the poor pastor could not move a foot or hand, or speak a word without a note being made of it by the clever spy who had become his shadow; so that on the next day, when he received the order to enter the cabinet of Desmarest, the latter knew better than he did himself all that he had said or done the preceding evening.
"Now," thought the chief of division, "unless he is deaf, blind, or dumb, he will not be silent this morning;" and desiring him to be seated—"Come," said he, "you are about, I hope, to give me an account of yesterday's business."
The good pastor was always somewhat surprised at the interest which his chief seemed to take in his actions or movements; he replied, with an air of astonishment—
"My business of yesterday! I passed my time, since our last interview, in nearly the same manner as I passed all the other days since our first meeting. In the morning I walked to the Tuileries; in the evening I strolled on the Boulevards."
"I am not asking about your acts or movements," interrupted Desmarest, "but about what you were able to observe."