"Good! Just fancy if Bouzille had tried to get through here with his train! There are some people about, eh?"
Two men passed the landlord of the market inn just then.
"Come along," said one of them, and as the other caught him up, Juve added: "Didn't you recognise those fellows?"
"No," said Fandor.
Juve told him the names of the men whom they had passed.
"You will understand that I don't want them to recognise me," he said, and as Fandor smiled Juve went on: "It's a queer thing, but it is always the future customers of the guillotine, apaches and fellows like that, who make a point of seeing this ghastly spectacle." The detective stopped and laid a hand upon the journalist's shoulder. "Wait," he said, "we are right in front now: only the men who are holding the line are ahead of us. If we want to get through and avoid the crush we must make ourselves known at once. Here is your pass."
Jérôme Fandor took the card which Juve held out to him, and had got for him as a special favour.
"What do we do now?" he asked.
"Here come the municipal guards," Juve replied; "I can see their sabres flashing. We will get behind the newspaper kiosks and let them drive the crowd back, and then we will go through."
Juve had correctly anticipated the manœuvre which the officer in command of the squadron immediately proceeded to execute. Grave and imposing, and marvellously mounted on magnificent horses, a large number of municipal guards had just arrived on the boulevard Arago, by the side of the Santé prison, and just where the detective and the journalist were standing. A sharp order rang out, and the guards deployed fan-wise and, riding knee to knee, drove the crowd back irresistibly to the end of the avenue, utterly disregarding the angry murmur of protest, and the general crushing that ensued.