(I do not understand,) replied the janitor.

"My sword," went on La Mole.

"_Ich verstehe nicht_," repeated the janitor.

"--which I left--my sword which I left"--

"_Ich verstehe nicht._"

"--in this house, in which I spent the night."

"_Gehe zum Teufel!_" (Go to the devil!) And he slammed the door in La
Mole's face.

"By Heaven!" cried La Mole, "if I had this sword I have just asked for,
I would gladly put it through that fellow's body. But I have not, and
this must wait for another day."

Thereupon La Mole continued his way to the Rue Roi de Sicile, took about
fifty steps to the right, then to the left again, and came to the Rue
Tizon, a little street running parallel with the Rue Cloche Percee, and
like it in every way. More than this, scarcely had he gone thirty steps
before he came upon the door with the large nails, with its shed and
loop-holes, the two steps and the wall. One would have said that the Rue
Cloche Percee had returned to see him pass by.

La Mole then reflected that he might have mistaken his right for his
left, and he knocked at this door, to make the same demand he had made
at the other. But this time he knocked in vain. The door was not opened.

Two or three times La Mole made the same trip, which naturally led him
to the idea that the house had two entrances, one on the Rue Cloche
Percee, the other on the Rue Tizon.

But this conclusion, logical as it was, did not bring him back his
sword, and did not tell him where his friend was. For an instant he
conceived the idea of buying another sword and cutting to pieces the
wretched janitor who so persistently refused to speak anything but
German, but he thought this porter belonged to Marguerite, and that if
Marguerite had chosen thus, it was because she had her reasons, and that
it might be disagreeable for her to be deprived of him.

Now La Mole would not have done anything disagreeable to Marguerite for
anything in the world.

Fearing to yield to this temptation he returned about two o'clock in the
afternoon to the Louvre.

As his room was not occupied this time he could enter it. The matter was
urgent enough as far as his doublet was concerned, which, as the queen
had already remarked to him, was considerably torn.

He therefore at once approached his bed to substitute the beautiful
pearl-gray doublet for the one he wore, when to his great surprise the
first thing he perceived near the pearl-gray doublet was the famous
sword w