This he, however, was powerless to resent.
"As you may believe," said he, "I made every inquiry into the past as well as the present of the Duke, and also tried to discover who was the mother of the child, but in this I entirely failed." "What! not with all your means ?" cried Tantaine, with a sneer.
"Laugh at me as much as you like; but out of the thirty servants in the Champdoce establishment, not one has been there more than ten years.
Nor could I anywhere lay my hands upon one who had been in the Duke's service in his youth.

Once, however, as I was in the wineshop in the Rue de Varennes, I quite by chance heard allusion made to a woman who had been in the service of the Duke twenty-five years ago, and who was now in receipt of a small allowance from him.

This woman was Caroline Schimmel.

I easily found out her address, and set a watch on her." "And of what use will she be to you ?" "Very little, I fear.

And yet the allowance looks as if she had at one time done something out of the way for her employers.