"Lady? Sent the papers? Who? What lady?" Jerome asked before she could answer anything.
"That I must not tell, Monsieur. Oh, come, quick; get him away from there; if our people find him they may do him harm. Monsieur is a brave gentleman, a friend of his, is it not true? Come."
Jerome drew the facts pretty well out of the excited girl, knowing somewhat of the circumstances and guessing the rest—all in an exceeding short space of time. Florine told him as accurately as she could in what room I lay, leaving him to locate the window from the street. From this point the plan was simple enough. Jerome and Florine arrived at Bertrand's by different routes, Florine passing in unconcernedly, and Jerome, clad again as a stupid country knave, walked by the house to discover my outer window.
It was at this time that the falling of the spur conveyed to him the intelligence of my life and place of confinement. After this Jerome had to depend greatly upon the quick-witted woman.
It would be a long story, and a bootless, were I to tell how it fell out that Florine had a friend, the same kind-faced woman who helped her watch beside my bed; the window of this friend's garret room opened almost directly opposite Florine's own poor apartment. Only a narrow, dingy alley lay between; so scant was the space the upper stories came near to touching across it. Florine's friend, after some tearful persuasion, consented to aid the rescue of such a gallant gentleman as I was described to be. The girl could come and go at will. The friend permitted Jerome and three of his men to hide in her room. From her window Jerome cast a light cord into Florine's window, she drawing a stouter rope across with it, and made fast. It now became a trifling feat for these nimble adventurers to swing themselves across to Florine's room, but twelve feet or so away. Once inside Bertrand's they proceeded with abundant caution, all of which near came to naught through Florine's sudden shriek and my own nervous clamor. It shamed me heartily.
"Truly, comrade, thou hast good lungs," Jerome told me days afterward. "It took all our strength to shut thee of thy wind."
When the four men found me a helpless body in their hands, they were greatly troubled. However, Florine insisted that I be carried to her room where she could conceal me.
Once there they found means to truss me up like a bale of merchandise and sling me across the alley again, whence I was conveyed, still unconscious, through out-of-the-way streets to the Austrian Arms.
And so it was I came to my strength, safe in my own lodgings in Rue St. Denis, with Florine and her kind-hearted friend to nurse me.