"Say, on the sixteenth instant."
"Good! he returned from botanizing in Meudon Wood on the seventeenth with a youth, and this stranger stayed all night under his roof. You are crossed by luck. Give it up or you would have all the philosophers against us in riot."
"Oh, Lord! what will sister Jeanne say?"
"Oh, does the countess want the lad? Why not coax him out, and then we would nab him, anywhere not inside Rousseau's house?"
"You might as well coax a hyena."
"I doubt it is so difficult. All you want is a go-between. Let me see; a prince will not do; better one of these writers, a poet, a philosopher or a bota—stay, I have him!"
"Gilbert?"
"Yes, through a botanist friend of Rousseau's. You know Jussieu?"
"Yes, for the countess lets him prowl in her gardens and rifle them."
"I begin to believe that you shall have your Gilbert, without any noise. Rousseau will hand him over, pinioned, so to say. So you go on making a trap for philosophers, according to a plan I will give you, on vacant ground out Meudon or Marly way. Now, let us be off, as the passengers are beginning to stare at us. Home, coachman!"