“Well, it is excellent,” he whispered grudgingly—“if only thy caution matched thy skill.”
Then he came close up to me.
“I have news,” he muttered. “All is in preparation. It needs only that thou play’st thy part silently and surely. A moment’s decision and the game is thine.”
“But, the sentry, say’st thou?”
“He will be withdrawn. What, is it not the eve of the Décadi?[2] To-night, the wine-shops; to-morrow, full suburbs and an empty Paris, but for thee the Public Accuser with his questions.”
“And why should he not visit me to-day?”
“Rest assured. He hath a double baking to occupy him.”
A noise sounded in the corridor. The man put his finger to his lips, pointed significantly at the remainder litter about the sill, stole to the door, jangled his keys viciously and bellowed at me: “Thou shalt have that or nothing! Saint Sacrement, but the dainty bellies of these upstarts!”—and off he went, slamming the door after him, and grumbling till he was out of hearing.
“Excellent nameless one!” I cried to myself; and so, having most scrupulously removed every trace of my work, I fell, while attacking with appetite the meal left for me, into a sort of luminous meditation upon the alluring prospect half opened out to my vision.
“And whence, in the name of God,” I marvelled, “issues this unknown influence that thus exerts itself on my behalf; and by what process of gratitude can my jailer, in these days of a general repudiation of obligations, have attached himself to a cause that, on the face of it, seems a purely quixotic one?”