.
Jean shook him roughly by the shoulder and asked him where the
portrait came from, declaring that he, Jean, had not the smallest
wish to keep it. The Colonel woke, but his speech was thick and
his memory confused. His mind was full of his underground passages.
He was commander of them all and could not find one. There was
something in this fact that offended his sense of justice. The
Lady Superior of the Nuns of Marie-Joseph had refused to betray
the secret of the famous Saint-Lazare tunnel.

"She has refused," declared the old Italian, "out of contumacy--and
also, perhaps, because there is no tunnel. And, since truth must
out, I'm bound to say, if I was not Commandant of the subterranean
passages of the capital, I should really think there were none."

His wits came back little by little.

"Young man, you have seen the soldier reposing from his labours.
What question have you come to ask the veteran champion of freedom?"

"About Bargemont? About that portrait?"

"I know, I know. I proceeded with a dozen men to his domicile
to arrest him, but he had taken to flight, the coward! I carried
out a perquisition in his rooms. In the _salon_ I saw Madame
Bargemont's portrait and I said: 'That lady looks as sad as Monsieur
Jean Servien. They are both victims of the infamous Bargemont;
I will bring them together and they shall console each other.'
Monsieur Servien, oblige me by tasting that cognac; it comes
from the cellar of your odious rival."

He poured the brandy into two big glasses and hiccuped with a
laugh:

"The cognac of an enemy tastes well."

Then he fell back on the sofa, muttering:

"The soldier reposing----"

His face was crimson. Jean shrugged his shoulders and left the
room. He had hardly opened the door when the old man began howling
in his sleep: "Help! help! they're murdering me."

In an instant the _federes_ on guard hurled themselves upon Jean;
he could feel the cold muzzles of revolvers at his temples and
hear rifles banging off at random in the ante-room.

The Colonel was raving in the frenzy of alcoholic delirium, writhing
in horrible convulsions and yelling: "He has killed me! he has
murdered me!"

"He has murdered the Colonel," the _federes_ took up the cry.
"He has poisoned him. Take him before the court martial."

"Shoot him right away. He's an assassin; the Versaillais have
sent him."

"Off with him to the lock-up!"

Servien's denials and struggles were in vain. Again and aga