Was it not his good star that had sent him what he had been seeking--a means of fishing himself out of the troubled waters of the approaching crisis?
"But tell me, Monsieur Gascogne," said he, "are you quite sure that this man Salvat committed the crime ?" "Oh! perfectly sure, Monsieur le Ministre.

He'll confess everything in the cab before he reaches the Prefecture." Monferrand again walked to and fro with a pensive air, and ideas came to him as he spoke on in a slow, meditative fashion.

"My orders! well, my orders, they are, first, that you must act with the very greatest prudence.

Yes, don't gather a mob of promenaders together.

Try to arrange things so that the arrest may pass unperceived--and if you secure a confession keep it to yourself, don't communicate it to the newspapers.
Yes, I particularly recommend that point to you, don't take the newspapers into your confidence at all--and finally, come and tell me everything, and observe secrecy, absolute secrecy, with everybody else." Gascogne bowed and would have withdrawn, but Monferrand detained him to say that not a day passed without his friend Monsieur Lehmann, the Public Prosecutor, receiving letters from Anarchists who threatened to blow him up with his family; in such wise that, although he was by no means a coward, he wished his house to be guarded by plain-clothes officers.