Such were the gratifying expressions exchanged between them.

"Why, it is Raphael!"

"Good! we were looking for you."

"What! it is you, then?"

These three friendly exclamations quickly followed the insults, as the
light of a street lamp, flickering in the wind, fell upon the astonished
faces of the group.

"My dear fellow, you must come with us!" said the young man that Raphael
had all but knocked down.

"What is all this about?"

"Come along, and I will tell you the history of it as we go."

By fair means or foul, Raphael must go along with his friends towards
the Pont des Arts; they surrounded him, and linked him by the arm among
their merry band.

"We have been after you for about a week," the speaker went on. "At your
respectable hotel _de Saint Quentin_, where, by the way, the sign with
the alternate black and red letters cannot be removed, and hangs out
just as it did in the time of Jean Jacques, that Leonarda of yours told
us that you were off into the country. For all that, we certainly did
not look like duns, creditors, sheriff's officers, or the like. But no
matter! Rastignac had seen you the evening before at the Bouffons; we
took courage again, and made it a point of honor to find out whether
you were roosting in a tree in the Champs-Elysees, or in one of those
philanthropic abodes where the beggars sleep on a twopenny rope, or if,
more luckily, you were bivouacking in some boudoir or other. We could
not find you anywhere. Your name was not in the jailers' registers
at the St. Pelagie nor at La Force! Government departments, cafes,
libraries, lists of prefects' names, newspaper offices, restaurants,
greenrooms--to cut it short, every lurking place in Paris, good or bad,
has been explored in the most expert manner. We bewailed the loss of a
man endowed with such genius, that one might look to find him at Court
or in the common jails. We talked of canonizing you as a hero of July,
and, upon my word, we regretted you!"

As he spoke, the friends were crossing the Pont des Arts. Without
listening to them, Raphael looked at the Seine, at the clamoring waves
that reflected the lights of Paris. Above that river, in which but
now he had thought to fling himself, the old man's prediction had been
fulfilled, the hour of his death had been already put back by fate.

"We really regretted you," said his friend, still pursuing his theme.
"It was a question of a plan in which we included you as a superior