" She is very beautiful," he said to himself as he went
down the stairs at last ; ^^ but she is not at all like my sister,
nor like Lady Blanche — ^not in the least. But isn't it the
strangest thing in the world that I, the most practical of
engineers, should have become engaged in such a hopeless
search ? It would seem improbable in a dream or in a fiction ;
but I have learned that by far the most wonderful things are
those which take place in daily real life."



CHAPTER XXXVn.
THE FEMALE FHILOSOPHEB.
Thebb are in the Rue St. Antoine in Paris many obscure
nooks and hiding-places which are known only to the police.
In some of these it is possible that even the police have never
penetrated, so securely are they concealed in the labyrinth of
courts and alleys, cellars beneath cellars, and passages which
seem to return upon themselves. Li the worst of these lairs
many of the vermin of society, the pickpockets and burglars,
the counterfeiters and assassins, have, with the reptile-like
adroitness of such pests, succeeded in living long lives of
crime by night and concealment and drunkenness by day.
In the midst of this district there was a suite of rooms
known to those who frequented it as Madame Moisseline's.
The apartments are upon the fifth flat of the dilapidated



178 THE NEW NOBILITY.
