‘Gaudin’s voice, a livre to a sou!’ exclaimed the Marquis.
‘Antoine!’ cried his friend as they recognised each other. ‘It is lucky I cried out, although no help came. It takes a sharper eye and a quicker arm than mine to parry two blades at once.’
The two officers looked at each other for a minute, and then broke into a burst of laughter; whilst the third party took off his hat and humbly sued for forgiveness.
‘And Lachaussée, too!’ continued Sainte-Croix, as he perceived it was one of his dependants. ‘The chance is singular enough. I was even now on my way to the Gobelins to find you, rascal.’
‘Then we are not on the same errand?’ asked the Marquis.
‘If you are out as a coupe-bourse, certainly not. What devil prompted you to this venture? A woman?’ asked Sainte-Croix.
‘No devil half so bad,’ replied Brinvilliers; ‘but the fat Abbe de Cluny. He goes frequently to the Gobelins after dark; it is not to order tapestry only for his hôtel. Since the holy sisterhood of Port-Royal have moved to the Rue de la Bourbe, he seeks bright eyes elsewhere.’
‘I see your game,’ answered Gaudin; ‘you are deeper in debt than in love. But it is no use waiting longer. This is not the night for a man to rest by choice in the streets; and my cry appears at last to have had an effect upon the drowsy faubourgs.’
As he spoke, he directed the attention of Brinvilliers to one of the upper windows of a house whence a sleepy bourgeois had at last protruded his head, enveloped in an enormous convolution of hosiery. He projected a lighted candle before him, as he challenged the persons below; but, ere the question reached them, it was extinguished by the rain, and all was again dark and silent.
Sainte-Croix directed Lachaussée to pile together the embers in the cresset, which the brief struggle had somewhat disarranged; and then, as the night-wind blew them once more into a flame, he took the arm of the Marquis, and, preceded by the overlooker of the Gobelins, passed down the Rue Mouffetard.