"I begin to understand," cried Germain.
"But I was nearly getting in a 'fix,' for no patrol passed. I might have robbed myself twenty times with the greatest ease and safety. At last, about two o'clock in the morning, I heard the tread of the soldier boys, and then I pushed open the window, jumped into the room, pocketed the silver spoons and some other trifles. Fortunately the lively patrol had heard the smash of the windows, and just as I leaped out of the window they laid hands upon me. They knocked at the door, which the porter opened, they sent for the sergeant of police, who came. The porter told him that the two rooms had been hired that morning by a humpbacked gentleman, with black hair and blue spectacles, whose name was Grégoire. I had the thick head of hair which you now see, and my eyes were as wide open as a hare's on the watch, was as upright as a Russian sentinel, and could not be taken for a humpbacked gentleman, with blue glasses and black hair. I confessed all, and was conducted to the station, and from the station to this prison, where I arrived in the nick of time to snatch from the clutch of the Skeleton the young man of whom M. Rodolph had said to me, 'I am interested in him as much as if he were my own son.'"
"What do I not owe you for such devotion?"
"Not to me,—you owe it to M. Rodolph."
"But whence arises his interest in me?"
"That is for him to tell you, or, perhaps, he will not tell you, for he very often chooses to do good, and if you ask him why, he will not let you know."
"M. Rodolph, then, knows you are here?"
"I'm not such a fool as to tell him my plans; perhaps he would not have consented to my whim, and, really, I must say it was capital."
"But what risks you have run,—indeed, still run."
"Oh, what risk? I might not have been brought to La Force,—that was the worst risk,—but I relied on M. Rodolph's interest to have my prison changed, so that I might have got to you."