“And we must find him again. They have put the gendarmes on his track; but will they catch him?”
Michael burst out laughing.
“Never in his life!” he said. “Trumence will make his way to Oleron, where he has friends; the gendarmes will be after him in vain.”
M. Folgat slapped Michael amicably on the shoulder, and said,—
“But you, if you choose? Oh! do not look angry at me. We do not want to have him arrested. All I want you to do is to hand him a letter from me, and to bring me back his answer.”
“If that is all, then I am your man. Just give me time to change my clothes, and to let father know, and I am off.”
Thus M. Folgat began, as far as in him lay, to prepare for future action, trying to counteract all the cunning measures of the prosecution by such combinations as were suggested to him by his experience and his genius.
Did it follow from this, that his faith in ultimate success was strong enough to make him speak of it to his most reliable friends, even, say to Dr. Seignebos, to M. Magloire, or to good M. Mechinet?
No; for, bearing all the responsibility on his own shoulders, he had carefully weighed the contrary chances of the terrible game in which he proposed to engage, and in which the stakes were the honor and the life of a man. He knew, better than anybody else, that a mere nothing might destroy all his plans, and that Jacques’s fate was dependent on the most trivial accident.
Like a great general on the eve of a battle, he managed to control his feelings, affecting, for the benefit of others, a confidence which he did not really feel, and allowing no feature of his face to betray the great anxiety which generally kept him awake more than half the night.