rapidly--though he was extremely
corpulent--arrived at No. 22, which opened as by enchantment at his
approach, and closed again on him and his two companions.

At the moment when they commenced this little detour, a young man,
dressed in a dark coat, wrapped in a mantle of the same color, and
wearing a broad-brimmed hat pulled down over his eyes, quitted the group
which surrounded the singer, singing himself, to the tune of Les Pendus,
"Vingt-quatre, vingt-quatre, vingt-quatre," and advancing rapidly toward
the Passage du Lycee, arrived at the further end in time to see the
three illustrious vagabonds enter the house as we have said. He threw a
glance round him, and by the light of one of the three lanterns, which
lighted, or rather ought to have lighted, the whole length of the
street, he perceived one of those immense coalheavers, with a face the
color of soot, so well stereotyped by Greuze, who was resting against
one of the posts of the Hotel de la Roche-Guyon, on which he had hung
his bag. For an instant he appeared to hesitate to approach this man;
but the coalheaver having sung the same air and the same burden, he
appeared to lose all hesitation, and went straight to him.

"Well, captain," said the man in the cloak, "did you see them?"

"As plainly as I see you, colonel--a musketeer and two light horse; but
I could not recognize them. However, as the musketeer hid his face in
his handkerchief, I presume it was the regent."

"Himself; and the two light horse are Simiane and Ravanne."

"Ah, ah! my scholar," said the captain, "I shall have great pleasure in
seeing him again: he is a good boy."

"At any rate, captain, take care he does not recognize you."

"Recognize me! It must be the devil himself to recognize me, accoutered
as I am. It is you, rather, chevalier, who should take the caution. You
have an unfortunately aristocratic air, which does not suit at all with
your dress. However, there they are in the trap, and we must take care
they do not leave it. Have our people been told?"

"Your people, captain. I know no more of them than they do of me. I
quitted the group singing the burden which was our signal. Did they hear
me? Did they understand me? I know nothing of it."

"Be easy, colonel. These fellows hear half a voice, and understand half
a word."

Indeed, as soon as the man in the cloak had left the group, a strange
fluctuation which he had not foreseen began to take place in the crowd,
which app