After these ineffectual efforts the search relaxed; the prefect was the first to retreat, leaving, by way of precaution, a sufficient number of men to guard each room in the house, while the commissaries of police took up their quarters on the ground-floor. The house was still surrounded and the National Guard sent a detachment to relieve the troops of the line, who took a rest.
In distributing sentries, two gendarmes were placed in two attic rooms, which had, of course, been carefully searched. The cold was so sharp that these men suffered from it. One of them went downstairs and returned with an armful of peat-fuel, and ten minutes later a fine fire was blazing in the chimney, the iron back of which was soon red-hot.
Almost at the same time, although it was scarcely daylight, the work of the masons began again; their crow-bars and mallets struck the walls of the attic rooms and made them tremble. In spite of this noisy racket, one of the gendarmes was fast asleep; his companion, now comfortably warm, had ceased to keep up the fire, and the masons, satisfied at last, gave up the search in this part of the house, which, with the instinct of their trade, they had carefully explored.
The gendarme who was awake, profiting by the silence that followed the diabolical uproar which had continued since early on the previous evening, went to sleep himself. His companion soon after waked up cold. His eyes were scarcely open before he thought of warming himself, and relighted the fire; but as the peat did not ignite very readily, he threw into the fireplace a number of copies of the "Quotidienne" which lay pell-mell upon the table. The flames from the newspapers produced a thicker smoke and greater heat than the peat had done at any time. The gendarme, feeling comfortable, was occupying his time by reading the "Quotidienne," when all of a sudden his pyrotechnic edifice came tumbling clown, and the peat squares which he had set against the chimney-back rolled into the room.
At the same instant he heard from behind that back a noise which gave him an odd idea; he fancied there were rats in the chimney, and that the heat of his fire had forced them to decamp. On this he woke up his comrade, and together they made ready to chase the rodents, sabre in hand.
While their attention was wholly fixed on this new species of game, one of them noticed a decided movement of the chimney-back, and he called out:--
"Who's there?"
A woman's voice replied:--
"We surrender,--we will open the door; put out your fire!"
The two gendarmes jumped to their fire and scattered it out with a few kicks. The chimney-back then slowly turned on a pivot and disclosed a hollow space, from which a woman, bareheaded, her face pale, her hair standing up from her forehead like that of a man, dressed in a simple Neapolitan gown of a brown color, scorched in many places, came forth, placing her feet and hands on the heated hearth.