Just at this point, out from the kitchen across the courtyard stepped Jean, bearing in his hands a huge bowl of soup for the breakfast of the soldiers in the Tower. To carry this to the guard-room where the meal was served, he was obliged to pass directly through the group gathered at the door. Well he knew the meaning of those blenched faces, those hopeless, despairing eyes, but he walked slowly by them all without a sign of recognition.
La Souris was kneeling before the basket, holding to the light a pillow-slip, when Jean passed directly behind him. With a studied carelessness, the boy deliberately tripped over the man's foot, lost his grip on the huge tureen, and skilfully managed to pour the entire steaming contents down the back of the unsuspecting municipal! With a hideous yell, La Souris dropped the linen and sprang to his feet.
"Oh! Pardon! pardon, Citizen! It was an accident!" shrieked Jean, assuming a well-feigned fright and dashing past him into the courtyard. La Souris, frenzied by the blistering of his back, and furious with rage at its perpetrator, tore after him, longing only to lay his hands on the agile lad. Round and round they flew, Jean ducking, doubling and evading with the skill of an accomplished Parisian gamin, while the soldiers gathered about laughing and applauding the race. La Souris panted and shrieked for vengeance, but he was no match for this agile lad, and he stopped at last, exhausted by his exertion and his very real pain.
"Someone call a doctor!" he groaned. "I haven't an inch of skin left on my back!" Jean, the wily, was the first and most ardent to rush off at this command, and fetch the Temple surgeon. La Souris, faint with suffering, was removed to his house in a cab, having forgotten all about the basket which had long since been quietly and thankfully removed. During the excitement and noise, when everyone had rushed to the yard to witness the chase, the sick child had been carried to the attic and hidden away in a long-unused half-boarded-up lumber room. The basket was returned to Mère Clouet, and the plot so far was safe, thanks to the timely intervention of Jean. He was the hero of the hour that night at the Brotherhood, and thoroughly did he enjoy that honourable position.
"But you've no idea," he declared, "how Caron and I worked to get that soup heated to the proper boiling pitch! I was watching at the window, when I wasn't cramming wood in the fire, and I certainly thought La Souris would have everything out of that basket before it was ready! It was Caron who thought of the soup!"
"Yes, but no one could have carried it out so well as Jean!" insisted the admiring Caron. "Whoever thought that La Souris would turn up just this day! The Evil One himself must have prompted him! Well, he's out of the way now for a spell, and that's a mercy!"
All this while the little captive king was living in total ignorance that there was such a thing as a plot for his escape. Release was something he had long given up as hopeless. Sometimes, even to his childish mind, it seemed as though death alone could free him from his long imprisonment. He was grieved and sad over the thought of Laurent's approaching departure, for he had begun to cherish a real affection for this first kindly man who had come into his life in many a weary month. He dreaded to think who might take his place, though Gomin was still to be there. But Gomin had to give much of his time to the sister on the floor above.
On the night of March twenty-ninth, Laurent bade a tender farewell to Louis Charles. When the door at last closed behind him, the boy threw himself on his bed in a violent fit of weeping. It was here that Gomin found him when he came in later with his supper. Gomin himself was nervous, excited and ill at ease, for this was the appointed time for the second great move in the scheme of liberation. On him this time depended success!
For a while the child refused to eat anything. This distressed Gomin beyond measure, for it was important that the meal should be eaten, since it was heavily dosed with opium. Nothing could be well accomplished unless the boy were rendered unconscious. At last, to please his keeper, Louis Charles swallowed the food though it almost choked him.
"Why am I so sleepy?" he presently asked. "It is not yet time to go to bed!"