"What! my dear fellow?"
"They have arrested me, that is all," said Lissac.
"Monsieur," the Commissioner quickly interrupted in a low voice, "no commotion, please. For my sake—and for yours."
He lightly touched Lissac's buttonhole with the end of his finger, as if to intimate that there was the explanation of his arrest, and Guy suddenly became very red and stamped his foot.
"Idiot that I am!—I am at your orders, monsieur," he said, making a sign to the Commissioner to pass out.
He again saluted the stupefied journalist, and the Commissioner bowing to him, out of politeness or prudence, Guy passed before him, angrily twirling his mustache.
Besides Brévans, nobody in all that crowd suspected that a man had just been arrested in the midst of the Exposition. Unless the journalist had hawked the news from group to group, it would not have been suspected.
Lissac found at the door of the Club on Place Vendôme a hired carriage which had come up as soon as the driver saw the Commissioner. Two agents, having the appearance of good, peaceable bourgeois, were walking about, chatting together on the sidewalk, as if on duty. The Commissioner said to one of them:
"I have no further need of you, Crabot will do."
Crabot, a little man with the profile of a weasel, slowly mounted the box beside the coachman, and the Commissioner of Police took his seat next to Lissac, who had nervously plucked the rosette of the Portuguese Order of Christ from his buttonhole.