"Has he become a count?"
"No! from a cheat he has become a robber."
"Ah! ah!"
"They are at his heels for some diamonds he has stolen; and, by way of parenthesis, they belong to that jeweler who employed this sneak of a Morel, the lapidary whom we went to nab in the Rue du Temple, when a tall slim jockey, with black mustaches, paid for the starved rat, and came near pitching headforemost down the stairs Malicorne and me."
"Oh! yes, yes; I recollect. You told me that, my poor Bourdin; it was very funny. The best of the farce was that the portress of the house emptied on your backs a saucepan of boiling soup."
"Saucepan included, general, which burst like a bomb at our feet. The old sorceress!"
"That will be taken into your charge. But this handsome viscount?"
"I tell you, then, that Saint Rémy was prosecuted for a robbery, after having made his ninny of a father believe that he had blown his brains out. An agent of the police, one of my friends, knowing that I had for a long time tracked this lord, asked me if I could not put him on the scent. I learned too late, at the time of our last writ, which he had escaped, that he was burrowed in a farm at Arnouville, at five leagues from Paris. But when we arrived there it was too late; the bird had flown!
"Besides, he had the following day paid this bill of exchange, thanks to a certain great lady, they say. Yes, general; but no matter, I knew the rest. He had once been concealed there; he might well enough be concealed there a second time. That is what I said to my friend in the police. He proposed for me to lend a hand, as an amateur, and conduct him to the farm. I had nothing to do—it was a nice party to the country—I accepted."
"Well! the viscount?"