Then, in language which bore witness to a certain acquaintance with the polite world, the convict spoke to him with an almost lyrical sensibility of the wedding ceremony, at which he had been present, at a distance so as not to be recognized, but sufficiently near to keep an eye on those miscreants and thwart their schemes.
When Didier learned from Chéri-Bibi that he had again escaped from prison on the heels of the Parisian and his gang, and hastened after them to Europe solely to keep them under observation and prevent them from meeting him; when he learned that Chéri-Bibi had brought with him Yoyo transformed into a dental-surgeon; when he was told of the part played by M. Hilaire, to whom he already owed a great deal, in mounting guard during many days over him and his honeymoon; and when he learned that the fisherman who one evening took him and his wife for a row in his boat was no other than Chéri-Bibi—Chéri-Bibi, his guardian angel, his tutelary saint, who was always on the alert, now acting secretly and now crushing everything before him—Didier was at a loss to express his surprise and gratitude as well as his consternation at the evidence of so many dangers from which he had escaped at a time when he believed that they had been dispelled for ever.
He clasped the bandit's hand in his own trembling hand, and his emotion arose as much from a feeling of gratitude as from the discovery that when he believed that his bark had put off for Cythera he had been sailing over the abyss.
"You would never have known anything about all this if those swine had given me another couple of days," ended Chéri-Bibi with a profound sigh.
Captain d'Haumont grasped the significance of those words. He quivered all over. A nice conversation! And such a meeting!
To have on the one hand Françoise, who lived but for his love, and on the other Chéri-Bibi, who had escaped from the devil!
But the latter had not come to receive the Nut's thanks and speeches. The moment that he was certain that he would never manage to convince him, he quickly disappeared. He departed as he came, by the window, over the roofs, and through the great, heavy, sweeping clouds in which his huge form seemed to swell.
[CHAPTER XXI]
THE SEQUEL TO M. HILAIRE'S HOLIDAY
That afternoon M. Hilaire was driving a large motor-car with the hood up, and few persons would have thought that he was not the owner of the splendid equipage. Obviously there was nothing about him to suggest the servant.