"Until this evening, before midnight."
"Ah! by the way, De Mouy, swing your right arm a good deal as you walk. This is a peculiar trick of Monsieur de la Mole's."
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE RUE TIZON AND THE RUE CLOCHE PERCÉE.
La Mole hurriedly left the Louvre, and set out to search Paris for poor Coconnas.
His first move was to repair to the Rue de l'Arbre Sec and to enter Maître La Hurière's, for La Mole remembered that he had often repeated to the Piedmontese a certain Latin motto which was meant to prove that Love, Bacchus, and Ceres are gods absolutely necessary to us, and he hoped that Coconnas, to follow up the Roman aphorism, had gone to the Belle Étoile after a night which must have been as full for his friend as it had been for himself.
La Mole found nothing at La Hurière's except the reminder of the assumed obligation. A breakfast which was offered with good grace was eagerly accepted by our gentleman, in spite of his anxiety. His stomach calmed in default of his mind, La Mole resumed his walk, ascending the bank of the Seine like a husband searching for his drowned wife. On reaching the quay of the Grève, he recognized the place where, as he had said to Monsieur d'Alençon, he had been stopped during his nocturnal tramp three or four hours before. This was no unusual thing in Paris, older by a hundred years than that in which Boileau was awakened at the sound of a ball piercing his window shutter. A bit of the plume from his hat remained on the battle-field. The sentiment of possession is innate in man. La Mole had ten plumes each more beautiful than the last, and yet he stopped to pick up that one, or, rather, the sole fragment of what remained of it, and was contemplating it with a pitiful air when he heard the sound of heavy steps approaching, and rough voices ordering him to stand aside. La Mole raised his head and perceived a litter preceded by two pages and accompanied by an outrider. La Mole thought he recognized the litter, and quickly stepped aside.
The young man was not mistaken.
"Monsieur de la Mole!" exclaimed a sweet voice from the litter, while a hand as white and as smooth as satin drew back the curtains.