"Alright, Father James. I'll slip on my trousers and open the door in an instant."
While speaking, John had hustled off his cravat, his vest, and his cloak of municipal officership. He kept on only his pantaloons, and feigning to be but half dressed in his haste to get out of bed, opened the door at the moment that the commissioner of the Section, the same who the evening before had carried on the search at Desmarais's, appeared on the landing, followed by his agents and several gendarmes. The magistrate, a friend of Marat's, knew Lebrenn, and greeted him cordially:
"I regret, Citizen Lebrenn, that you have been awakened. You are one of those in whose abodes there is no reason for searches and seizures."
"No matter, citizen; come in, do your duty. I ask you only not to go into my sister's room. She is ill."
"I shall go neither into your sister's room nor yours, Citizen Lebrenn."
"Who is it you seek?"
"An ex-noble, the Count of Plouernel, formerly a colonel in the Guards. He was installed in a house next to this, in the rooms of an old huntsman of Louis Capet's; but warned, no doubt, of our approach, our ex-noble took to his heels. I first thought he might have escaped by the roofs; but after an inspection of them, I recognized that only a roofer, and an intrepid one at that, would have dared to risk his life on such a slope. To acquit my conscience I came, nevertheless, to inspect the attic of this house. So, good night, Citizen Lebrenn."
The magistrate shook the hand of the young man, who watched the commissioner proceed towards the attic, and then re-entered his own rooms and locked the door.
CHAPTER XVII.
PLANS FOR THE FUTURE.
The day following these events in the lodgings of John Lebrenn, Charlotte Desmarais was again talking with her mother in the parlor of their apartment. The latter, pale and downcast, and her eyes red with weeping, still trembled for the life of her brother, who, scenting the snare in the commissioner's advice to leave Paris by the St. Victor barrier, had remained snug in his refuge. The lawyer's wife was saying to her daughter: