Gregory shook his head. "No," he replied. "You pretend to be so intimate with the habits of Fortune, and yet you ask a question like that! Let us go on. We are bound to find our way somehow into some street where there is more life and movement. And if we meet a gang of Apaches—well, we are neither of us weaklings, and we have got a couple of good walking-sticks. Forward, Emile Deschamps! We go to seek our fortune!" And as he said it he laughed with bitter cynicism.
They went on, but as they did so, and when they had walked a hundred and fifty yards or more, the street in which they were grew even narrower and more silent. Every now and then, at long distances, there was a gas lamp, but its yellow light was so muffled by the fog that it hardly penetrated for more than a yard or so, and if the prismatic colours the light made upon the mist were beautiful, they were quite useless to two young gentlemen hungry for supper and far from home.
Emile Deschamps took a box of matches from his pocket, wax ones, which burned immediately without the spectral blue flame of the more general Government article. He lit one—there was not a breath of wind—and held it above his head. The two men walked onwards for a few yards while the feeble light lasted, carefully scrutinising the tall houses which abutted on the pavement. They seemed to consist of small workshops and factories, now blind and deserted. Another match brought them to a stretch of wide wood paling, beyond which rose dim objects seeming like giant mounds or pyramids, and even as the match flickered out it threw its light upon a painted sign.
"Ah!" Deschamps said suddenly. "Now I know! We are in the wood quarter! This is a street of chantiers de bois."
Basil groaned. "Good heavens!" he said, "then we have come out of our way," for he knew instantly that they had penetrated to that part of Paris where the huge wood-sheds were, where the firewood is cut and stored, and timber for all other purposes is kept. All around them were the great wood stacks and deserted yards. There was not a sound to be heard, and doubtless the few watchmen that were on guard were comfortably sleeping over the stoves in their huts.
"Go on, or turn back?" Deschamps said.
Gregory took a franc from his pocket, and spun it under a gas lamp to which they had just come up. "Heads we go on," he said, and as the coin fell upon the back of his hand, sure enough the figure of Liberty was uppermost.
"That settles it," he said, and once again the boots of the friends rang upon the pavement.
They had travelled for some fifty yards or so, when a rather brighter light than usual came into their view.
"By Jove!" Gregory said, "an electric light at last! I know current is supplied to this neighbourhood because there have recently been representations in the Chamber of Deputies as to the necessity for supplying current to all this part owing to the inflammable nature of the wood. The Société is interested in the matter. I saw some correspondence about it in the office, but the people in this part are very conservative and none too well off, either. Let us have a look."