"Suppose I get the dog while you are changing?" suggested Tignol. "You know he's been clipped?"
"Poor Cæsar! Yes, get him. My room is across the street. Walk back and forth along here until I come down."
Half an hour later Coquenil reappeared almost his ordinary self, except that he wore neither mustache nor eyeglasses, and, instead of his usual neat dress he had put on the shabby black coat and the battered soft hat that he had worn in leaving the Hôtel des Étrangers.
"Ah, Cæsar! Old fellow!" he cried fondly as the dog rushed to meet him with barks of joy. "It's good to have a friend like that! Where is the man who cares so much? Or the woman either—except one?"
"There's one woman who seems to care a lot about this dog," remarked Tignol. "I mean the candle girl. Such a fuss as she made when I went to get him!"
M. Paul listened in surprise. "What did she do?"
"Do? She cried and carried on in a great way. She said something was going to happen to Cæsar; she didn't want me to take him."
"Strange!" muttered the other.
"I told her I was only taking him to you, and that you would bring him back to-night. When she had heard that she caught my two hands in hers and said I must tell you she wanted to see you very much. There's something on her mind or—or she's afraid of something."
Coquenil frowned and twisted his seal ring, then he changed it deliberately from the left hand to the right, as if with some intention.