"Who are you, then? What is your affair with me that you track me thus?"
"I am servant to Carvel, the exempt. I have orders to keep you in view."
"Servant to an exempt![[5]] What, pray, has an exempt to do with me?" Bertie asked in astonishment.
"That, monsieur," the man said, still very respectfully, "I cannot say. I but obey my orders, do my duty. I received instructions that you were to be kept under watch from the time you entered Paris, and I am carrying them out--must carry them out."
"Where is this exempt to be found, this man Carvel? We will have the matter regulated at once. Where is he, I say?"
"If monsieur would be so complaisant as to follow me--it is but across the Pont Neuf--doubtless monsieur will make everything clear."
"Lead on," Bertie said, "I will follow you, or, since you may doubt me, will go first."
"If monsieur pleases."
At this period, and indeed for long afterwards, Paris was too often the scene of terrible outrages committed on unprotected persons. Men--sometimes even women--were inveigled into houses under one pretence or another and robbed, oftentimes murdered for whatever they might chance to have about them, and, frequently, were never heard of again. That this was the case Bertie knew perfectly well, yet--even after the mysterious murder of his friend at Amiens--he had not the slightest belief that anything of a similar nature was intended towards him. First, he was a soldier and known by the man behind him to be one; he was armed, although now dressed as a civilian, and therefore a dangerous man to attack. And, next, none who knew aught of him could suppose that it would be worth while to endeavour to rob him. The Scots officers serving in France were no fit game for such as got their living by preying on their fellow-creatures.
Still he could not but muse deeply on what could possibly be the object of any exempt in subjecting him to such espionage, while at the same time he hastened his footsteps over the bridge so as at once to arrive at a solution of the matter.