e chevalier and the captain. It was then
that D'Harmental had recognized him, and had protected him against the
first impulse of Roquefinette, inviting him to continue his route as
quickly as possible. There was no need to repeat the request--Buvat set
off at a trot, gained the Place des Victoires, the Rue du Mail, the Rue
Montmartre, and at last arrived at his own house, No. 4, Rue du
Temps-Perdu, where, nevertheless, he did not think himself safe till he
had shut the door and bolted it behind him.

There he stopped an instant to breathe and to light his candle--then
ascended the stairs, but he felt in his legs the effect of the
occurrence, for he trembled so that he could hardly get to the top.

As to Bathilde, she had remained alone, getting more and more uneasy as
the evening advanced. Up to seven o'clock she had seen a light in her
neighbor's room, but at that time the lamp had been extinguished, and
had not been relighted. Then Bathilde's time became divided between two
occupations--one of which consisted in standing at her window to see if
her neighbor did not return; the other in kneeling before the crucifix,
where she said her evening prayers. She heard nine, ten, eleven, and
half-past eleven, strike successively. She had heard all the noises in
the streets die away one by one, and sink gradually into that vague and
heavy sound which seems the breathing of a sleeping town; and all this
without bringing her the slightest inkling as to whether he who had
called himself her brother had sunk under the danger which hung over his
head, or come triumphant through the crisis.

She was then in her own room, without light, so that no one might see
that she was watching, and kneeling before her crucifix for the tenth
time, when the door opened, and, by the light of his candle she saw
Buvat so pale and haggard that she knew in an instant that something
must have happened to him, and she rose, in spite of the uneasiness she
felt for another, and darted toward him, asking what was the matter. But
it was no easy thing to make Buvat speak, in the state he then was; the
shock had reached his mind, and his tongue stammered as much as his legs
trembled.

Still, when Buvat was seated in his easy chair, and had wiped his
forehead with his handkerchief, when he had made two or three journeys
to the door to see that his terrible hosts of the Rue des Bons Enfants
had not followed him home, he began to stutter out his adventure. He