The stranger seemed to know the gastronomical taste of Pitou for he sent by the waiter some more delicacies, which he was still discussing, while wondering, when Billet reappeared. His brow was illumined with something like pleasure.
"Anything new, Father Billet?" asked the captain.
"Only that you will start for home to-morrow while I remain."
This is what Billet remained for.
A week after, he might have been seen, in the dress of a well-to-do farmer, in Plastriere Street. Two thirds up the thoroughfare was blocked by a crowd around a ballad singer with a fiddler to accompany him, who was singing a lampoon at the characters of the day.
Billet paused only an instant to listen to the strain, in which, from the Assembly being on the site of the old Horse-training ground, the attributes of horses were given to the members, as "the Roarer," to Mirabeau, etc.
Slipping in at an alleyway at the back of the throng, he came to a low doorway, over which was scrawled in red chalk—symbols effaced each time of usage:
"L. P. D."
This was the way down into a subterranean passage. Billet could not read but he may have understood that these letters were a token, He took the underground road with boldness.
At its end a pale light glimmered, by which a seated man was reading or pretending to read a newspaper, as is the custom of the Paris janitor of an evening.