hich he had left in the Rue Cloche Percee.

La Mole took it and turned it over and over.

It was really his.

"Ah! ah!" said he, "is there some magic under all this?" Then with a
sigh, "Ah! if poor Coconnas could be found like my sword!"

Two or three hours after La Mole had ceased his circular tramp around
the small double house, the door on the Rue Tizon had opened. It was
about five o'clock in the evening, consequently night had closed in.

A woman wrapped in a long cloak trimmed with fur, accompanied by an
attendant, came out of the door which was held open by a duenna of
forty, and hurrying rapidly along to the Rue Roi de Sicile, knocked at a
small door of the Hotel Argenson, which opened for her; she then left by
the main entrance of the same hotel which opened on to the Vieille Rue
du Temple, went toward a small postern in the Hotel de Guise, unlocked
it with a key which she carried in her pocket, and disappeared.

Half an hour later a young man with bandaged eyes left by the same door
of the small house, guided by a woman who led him to the corner of the
Rue Geoffroy Lasnier and La Mortellerie. There she asked him to count
fifty steps and then remove his bandage.

The young man carefully obeyed the order, and when he had counted fifty,
removed the handkerchief from his eyes.

"By Heaven!" cried he, looking around. "I'll be hanged if I know where I
am! Six o'clock!" he cried, as the clock of Notre-Dame struck, "and poor
La Mole, what can have become of him? Let us run to the Louvre, perhaps
they may have news of him there."

Coconnas hurriedly descended the Rue La Mortellerie, and reached the
gates of the Louvre in less time than it would have taken an ordinary
horse. As he went he jostled and knocked down the moving hedge of brave
bourgeois who were walking peacefully about the shops of the Place de
Baudoyer, and entered the palace.

There he questioned the Swiss and the sentinel. The former thought they
had seen Monsieur de la Mole enter that morning, but had not seen him go
out.

The sentinel had been there only an hour and a half and had seen
nothing.

He ran to his room and hastily threw open the door; but he found only
the torn doublet of La Mole on the bed, which increased his fears still
more.

Then he thought of La Huriere and hastened to the worthy inn of the
_Belle Etoile_. La Huriere had seen La Mole; La Mole had breakfasted
there. Coconnas was thus wholly reassured, and as he was very