‘Not at all,’ said Benoit, as he swept the pieces of money from the table and put them in his pocket again. ‘I know now how it was you were not drowned in the Bièvre; we shall see you on the gibbet yet. ’Tis a pity your horoscopes did not foretell this bad chance. I wish you good-bye.’
‘Hold!’ cried Lachaussée, as Benoit advanced to the door: ‘you go not so easily—we must understand each other first.’
‘It will not take long to do that,’ replied the Languedocian. ‘My arms can speak pretty plainly when they are needed.’
‘And so can this,’ exclaimed the other, as he took down a cumbrous old pistol fitted with a snaphaunce and presented it at the Languedocian. ‘Now—you are unarmed, and the odds are against you. We must have a compact before you leave.’
Benoit retreated before the fire-arm, as though intimidated until he reached the window; this he dashed open with his fist, and then commenced calling for the watch with all his might. In an instant Lachaussée raised the pistol and discharged its contents. But the snaphaunce was comparatively a clumsy contrivance; it hung a second upon being released; and Benoit, perceiving the object of the other, suddenly stooped, so that the charge, whatever it was, passed over his head and through the window, shattering the casement on the other side of the street.
‘A miss again!’ cried Benoit, jumping upright. ‘Bras d’Acier himself took no better aim in the catacombs. Au secours! aux voleurs! Now, then, Monsieur Lachaussée, look out for yourself. Here comes the Guet Royal, or I am mistaken.’
And indeed, as he spoke, the lanterns of the watch were discernible coming round the street, attracted by the lusty lungs of Benoit. Lachaussée muttered an imprecation as he advanced to the window, and observed them coming closer to the door. Not caring to be given into custody, and perceiving that he could not escape by the street, he hurriedly left the room, closing the door after him, and Benoit heard him going upstairs. The mastiff would, in all probability, have fastened upon the Languedocian, as he kept growling in a crouching position as though preparing to spring, but the contrivance fastened about his head so effectually muzzled him that Benoit was under no apprehensions.
‘Ohé! messieurs!’ he shouted; ‘come on, or the bird will have flown. Look out for the roof as well as the door. He is an active fellow, but no sorcerer. You see his familiars will not release him.’
As he spoke, a cry from the guard below called Benoit’s attention to the direction in which they were gazing. We have stated that the Rue de l’Hirondelle was crossed by several large black beams, from the houses on one side of the way to those on the other, that the ruinous buildings might not fall upon the heads of the passers-by. As Benoit looked up, he perceived that Lachaussée had emerged from one of the windows of the floor above, and at his imminent peril was clinging to the beam, and traversing it as he best might, to reach the house opposite. But, narrow as the thoroughfare was, before he had half crossed it, Benoit had crept out of the window from which he had called the watch, on to another of the supports below the one chosen by Lachaussée, and telling the guard to withhold their fire, was in pursuit of his old acquaintance. The soldiers paused to watch the strange chase, and gave a cry of admiration as Benoit, clutching the timber above him, by a violent effort swung himself up to the beam by which the other was endeavouring to escape.
It was a moment of keen anxiety. They were both afraid of letting go their hold, which was so treacherous that the least change in their position would have caused them to overbalance themselves and tumble down into the street; and so they remained for some minutes, watching each other like two fencers, to be in readiness for any attack the other was about to make. At length Lachaussée made a creeping movement in advance, when Benoit, whose mountebank engagements had given him a certain kind of gymnastic superiority, trusting to his knees to keep him from falling, caught hold of Lachaussée by the legs. But he lost his equilibrium in so doing, and after wavering for an instant as if in uncertainty, he fell on one side of the beam—still, however, keeping hold of the other, who was now driven to support both himself and Benoit by his arms, half-hanging from, half-leaning over, the timber.