He was lost in conjectures.
He could not doubt his own identity.
Still, how had it come to pass that, having fallen in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, he had been picked up by the police-agent on the banks of the Seine, near the Pont des Invalides?
Some one had carried him from the Quartier des Halles to the Champs-Elysees. And how?
Through the sewer.
Unheard-of devotion!
Some one?
Who?
This was the man for whom Marius was searching.
Of this man, who was his savior, nothing; not a trace; not the faintest indication.
Marius, although forced to preserve great reserve, in that direction, pushed his inquiries as far as the prefecture of police.
There, no more than elsewhere, did the information obtained lead to any enlightenment.
The prefecture knew less about the matter than did the hackney-coachman. They had no knowledge of any arrest having been made on the 6th of June at the mouth of the Grand Sewer.
No report of any agent had been received there upon this matter, which was regarded at the prefecture as a fable.
The invention of this fable was attributed to the coachman.
A coachman who wants a gratuity is capable of anything, even of imagination.
The fact was assured, nevertheless, and Marius could not doubt it, unless he doubted his own identity, as we have just said.