tinct which leads thieves always to
take the safest path, he found himself at the end of the Rue Lafayette.
There he stopped, breathless and panting. He was quite alone; on one
side was the vast wilderness of the Saint-Lazare, on the other, Paris
enshrouded in darkness. "Am I to be captured?" he cried; "no, not if I
can use more activity than my enemies. My safety is now a mere question
of speed." At this moment he saw a cab at the top of the Faubourg
Poissonniere. The dull driver, smoking his pipe, was plodding along
toward the limits of the Faubourg Saint-Denis, where no doubt he
ordinarily had his station. "Ho, friend!" said Benedetto.

"What do you want, sir?" asked the driver.

"Is your horse tired?"

"Tired? oh, yes, tired enough--he has done nothing the whole of this
blessed day! Four wretched fares, and twenty sous over, making in all
seven francs, are all that I have earned, and I ought to take ten to the
owner."

"Will you add these twenty francs to the seven you have?"

"With pleasure, sir; twenty francs are not to be despised. Tell me what
I am to do for this."

"A very easy thing, if your horse isn't tired."

"I tell you he'll go like the wind,--only tell me which way to drive."

"Towards the Louvres."

"Ah, I know the way--you get good sweetened rum over there."

"Exactly so; I merely wish to overtake one of my friends, with whom I am
going to hunt to-morrow at Chapelle-en-Serval. He should have waited for
me here with a cabriolet till half-past eleven; it is twelve, and, tired
of waiting, he must have gone on."

"It is likely."

"Well, will you try and overtake him?"

"Nothing I should like better."

"If you do not overtake him before we reach Bourget you shall have
twenty francs; if not before Louvres, thirty."

"And if we do overtake him?"

"Forty," said Andrea, after a moment's hesitation, at the end of which
he remembered that he might safely promise. "That's all right," said the
man; "hop in, and we're off! Who-o-o-p, la!"

Andrea got into the cab, which passed rapidly through the Faubourg
Saint-Denis, along the Faubourg Saint-Martin, crossed the barrier, and
threaded its way through the interminable Villette. They never overtook
the chimerical friend, yet Andrea frequently inquired of people on foot
whom he passed and at the inns which were not yet closed, for a green
cabriolet and bay horse; and as there are a great many cabriolets to be
seen on the road to the Low Countries,