“Do you belong to the police?” asked Gazonal, eying with uneasy curiosity the hard, impassible little man, who was dressed like the third clerk in a sheriff’s office.
“Which police do you mean?” asked Fromenteau.
“There are several?”
“As many as five,” replied the man. “Criminal, the head of which was Vidoeq; secret police, which keeps an eye on the other police, the head of it being always unknown; political police,—that’s Fouche’s. Then there’s the police of Foreign Affairs, and finally, the palace police (of the Emperor, Louis XVIII., etc.), always squabbling with that of the quai Malaquais. It came to an end under Monsieur Decazes. I belonged to the police of Louis XVIII.; I’d been in it since 1793, with that poor Contenson.”
The four gentlemen looked at each other with one thought: “How many heads he must have brought to the scaffold!”
“Now-a-days, they are trying to get on without us. Folly!” continued the little man, who began to seem terrible. “Since 1830 they want honest men at the prefecture! I resigned, and I’ve made myself a small vocation by arresting for debt.”
“He is the right arm of the commercial police,” said Gaillard in Bixiou’s ear, “but you can never find out who pays him most, the debtor or the creditor.”
“The more rascally a business is, the more honor it needs. I’m for him who pays me best,” continued Fromenteau addressing Gaillard. “You want to recover fifty thousand francs and you talk farthings to your means of action. Give me five hundred francs and your man is pinched to-night, for we spotted him yesterday!”
“Five hundred francs for you alone!” cried Theodore Gaillard.
“Lizette wants a shawl,” said the spy, not a muscle of his face moving. “I call her Lizette because of Beranger.”