Although Maurice had expected this response, he turned pale.
“Is he wounded?” he asked, eagerly.
“He has not a scratch. But enter, sir, and pass on.”
From the anxious looks of these officers one might have supposed that they feared they should compromise themselves by conversing with the son of so great a criminal.
The carriage rolled beneath the gate-way; but it had not traversed two hundred yards of the Grand Rue before the abbe and Maurice had remarked several posters and notices affixed to the walls.
“We must see what this is,” they said, in a breath.
They stopped near one of these notices, before which a reader had already stationed himself; they descended from the carriage, and read the following order:
“article I.—The inmates of the house in which the elder Lacheneur shall be found will be handed over to a military commission for trial.
“article II.—Whoever shall deliver the body of the elder Lacheneur, dead or alive, will receive a reward of twenty thousand francs.”
This was signed Duc de Sairmeuse.