of their
section.

The laws framed by these same committees now demanded that all keepers
of lodging or apartment houses should within twenty-four hours give
notice at the bureau of their individual sections of the advent of new
lodgers, together with a description of the personal appearance of
such lodgers, and an indication of their presumed civil status and
occupation. But there was a margin of twenty-four hours, which could
on pressure be extended to forty-eight, and, therefore, any one could
obtain shelter for forty-eight hours, and have no questions asked,
provided he or she was willing to pay the exorbitant sum usually asked
under the circumstances.

Thus Blakeney had no difficulty in securing what lodgings he wanted when
he once more found himself inside Paris at somewhere about noon of that
same Monday.

The thought of Hastings and Tony speeding on towards Mantes with the
royal child safely held in Hastings' arms had kept his spirits buoyant
and caused him for a while to forget the terrible peril in which Armand
St. Just's thoughtless egoism had placed them both.

Blakeney was a man of abnormal physique and iron nerve, else he could
never have endured the fatigues of the past twenty-four hours, from
the moment when on the Sunday afternoon he began to play his part of
furniture-remover at the Temple, to that when at last on Monday at noon
he succeeded in persuading the sergeant at the Maillot gate that he
was an honest stonemason residing at Neuilly, who was come to Paris in
search of work.

After that matters became more simple. Terribly foot-sore, though
he would never have admitted it, hungry and weary, he turned into an
unpretentious eating-house and ordered some dinner. The place when he
entered was occupied mostly by labourers and workmen, dressed very much
as he was himself, and quite as grimy as he had become after having
driven about for hours in a laundry-cart and in a coal-cart, and having
walked twelve kilometres, some of which he had covered whilst carrying a
sleeping child in his arms.

Thus, Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart., the friend and companion of the Prince
of Wales, the most fastidious fop the salons of London and Bath had
ever seen, was in no way distinguishable outwardly from the tattered,
half-starved, dirty, and out-at-elbows products of this fraternising and
equalising Republic.

He was so hungry that the ill-cooked, badly-served meal tempted him to
eat; and he ate on in silence, s