And in that case what would happen?
Would he speak out, and would fresh perquisitions be made?
For a whole week the press had been busy with the bradawl found under the entrance of the Duvillard mansion.

Nearly every reporter in Paris had called at the Grandidier factory and interviewed both workmen and master.
Some had even started on personal investigations, in the hope of capturing the culprit themselves.

There was no end of jesting about the incompetence of the police, and the hunt for Salvat was followed all the more passionately by the general public, as the papers overflowed with the most ridiculous concoctions, predicting further explosions, and declaring even that all Paris would some morning be blown into the air.
The "Voix du Peuple" set a fresh shudder circulating every day by its announcements of threatening letters, incendiary placards and mysterious, far-reaching plots.

And never before had so base and foolish a spirit of contagion wafted insanity through a civilised city.
Guillaume, for his part, no sooner awoke of a morning than he was all impatience to see the newspapers, quivering at the idea that he would at last read of Salvat's arrest.

In his state of nervous expectancy, the wild campaign which the press had started, the idiotic and the ferocious things which he found in one or another journal, almost drove him crazy.
A number of "suspects" had already been arrested in a kind of chance razzia, which had swept up the usual Anarchist herd, together with sundry honest workmen and bandits, _illumines_ and lazy devils, in fact, a most singular, motley crew, which investigating magistrate Amadieu was endeavouring to turn into a gigantic association of evil-doers.