“I’m burning! I’m burning!” he repeated to himself. “Whenever circumstances bring me a new element of information, it confirms my supposition. On the one hand, I have the absolute certainty of the banks of the Seine; on the other, the certainty of the National Road. The two means of communication meet at the Havre, the town of Francis I., the town of the secret. The boundaries are contracting. The Caux country is not large; and, even so, I have only the western portion of the Caux country to search.”
He set to work with renewed stubbornness:
“Anything that Lupin has found,” he kept on saying to himself, “there is no reason for my not finding.”
Certainly, Lupin had some great advantage over him, perhaps a thorough acquaintance with the country, a precise knowledge of the local legends, or less than that, a memory: invaluable advantages these, for he, Beautrelet, knew nothing, was totally ignorant of the country, which he had first visited at the time of the Ambrumésy burglary and then only rapidly, without lingering.
But what did it matter? Though he had to devote ten years of his life to this investigation, he would carry it to a successful issue. Lupin was there. He could see him, he could feel him there. He expected to come upon him at the next turn of the road, on the skirt of the next wood, outside the next village. And, though continually disappointed, he seemed to find in each disappointment a fresh reason for persisting.
Often, he would fling himself on the slope by the roadside and plunge into wild examination of the copy of the document which he always carried on him, a copy, that is to say, with vowels taking the place of the figures:
Often, also, according to his habit, he would lie down flat on his stomach in the tall grass and think for hours. He had time enough. The future belonged to him.
With wonderful patience, he tramped from the Seine to the sea, and from the sea to the Seine, going gradually farther, retracing his steps and never quitting the ground until, theoretically speaking, there was not a chance left of gathering the smallest particle upon it.
He studied and explored Montivilliers and Saint-Romani and Octeville and Gonneville and Criquetot.