"You have worn yourself out with crying," answered Gomin. "You had better let me put you to bed at once." The boy complied, his eyelids sinking more and more each moment, and before he was half undressed he had fallen into a heavy slumber. But Gomin did not put him in bed. On the contrary, he wrapped him in a large shawl, and opening the door, made a sign to someone outside.
Barelle and Debièrne entered with a huge basket that at first seemed empty. When the door was closed, however, they removed a false bottom, and there lay the sick child, sleeping soundly but not drugged. Quick as a flash the change was made. The strange boy lay in the little king's bed, clothed in the king's own gown and cap, and Louis XVII was placed at the bottom of the basket. The false bottom was again adjusted, and the remaining space piled with odds and ends of waste that had accumulated during Laurent's stay.
When the basket was filled, the two municipals carried it upstairs, telling the sentries who challenged them that they were going to place in the lumber room all the old truck that Laurent had left behind him, in order to clear the premises for Lasne. The sentries, after a hasty examination, passed them on without trouble. The attic of the Tower was a vast space more than half filled with every manner of cast-off articles that could have accumulated in a century past. Here they removed the rubbish from the basket, and lifted out the boy. Approaching the wooden partition they knocked softly, in the manner of the Brotherhood.
"All right!" whispered a familiar voice from behind, and on removing a board the curly head of Jean appeared.
"Hand him in!" he said. With incredible difficulty they managed to squeeze the unconscious child through the small aperture. Behind the partition was a tiny space not more than six or seven feet in any direction. Within this space was a mattress on the floor, and nothing else. Jean laid the boy on the mattress, covered him, and called once more, "All right!" The two men drew the board into place, and no one would have suspected either that there was any space behind it, or what that space contained. Then they left the garret room, rejoicing in the success of the second great step, and Jean was left alone with his charge.
All night he sat by the bed watching. But morning came and no change had occurred. The drug still held the boy in its deadening grip. Jean ate his breakfast of half a loaf of bread, and washed it down with a pitcher of water. Then he continued his watch. About noon the little king came to himself, but so deathly ill was he from the effects of the opium, that he noticed neither his changed surroundings nor his companion for many hours. Meanwhile Jean nursed him tenderly, and forced him to swallow a healing draught that had been left for the purpose by Saintanac. Toward night Louis Charles recovered himself sufficiently to be conscious of some radical change in his surroundings.
"Why is it so dark?" he demanded. "And who are you?" Then Jean put his arms around the boy, and whispered the whole story in his ear.
"I am Jean," he ended, "who has loved you ever since I first saw you in your little garden at the Tuileries! Will you not trust me?" For a time it seemed as if the child could hardly comprehend it all. The news was so sudden, so confusing! It was too wonderful! It was beyond belief that he should be free at last, and that his long-lost friend should be one of the chief actors in that scheme of release! But something else troubled him.
"What of my mother and sister and aunt?" he inquired. "Will they also be released with me? I do not wish to go if they remain!" Jean was silent a moment. What should he reply? But the time was not yet ripe to reveal all the truth to this loving child.
"They will also be safe!" he answered. And satisfied with this, the little fellow put his head down on Jean's shoulder, and cried long and softly in the sheer excess of his joy.