"'Yes; they hang a fellow for so little, nowadays. You will permit, Duke, that I change the conversation; I avoid it usually. Indeed, I am careful not to tie my cravat too tight; it gives one a turn sometimes—a sort of prophetic hint.'
"'You are a droll devil,' laughed the Duke, 'and not bad company—where you can't run away with a purse. Do as you like.'
"'Thanks, Monsieur,' said the thief, and with no more words resumed a careful search, as it seemed to me, after nothing. Indeed, we young fellows laughed as he looked under and back of the casks. 'It is good to laugh,' he said, as we followed him about; 'but in my business, when there is no profit to be had, it is well to cultivate one's powers of observation.' After a while we tired of following him, and sat down; but he continued his search among the cobwebs—of which, trust me, there were enough even in those days.
"At last I saw him mount on top of some empty barrels at the far end of the cave. Unable to see behind them, he lowered his lantern between the casks and the wall of the cellar, and looked. Of a sudden he scrambled down and cried, waving his lantern: 'A thief for luck! A thief for luck!'
"'What! what!' exclaimed the Duke, rising. As to the thief, he knelt down at my mother's feet and said, looking in her face: 'Madame, God has sent you this thief to show you a way out of this grave.' My mother caught his arm and cried, 'Let this jesting cease.' He answered, 'I do not jest,' and we all leaped up and came to where he knelt.
"'What is this?' said the Duke; on which our thief turned to the end of the vault and quite easily spun aside two of the casks.
"'Look!' he said. To our surprise, there were several boards set against the wall, and between their joinings came a current of air which flared a candle-flame. 'There is a space beyond,' said the Duke. 'Is it the catacombs? And was this vault a part? See the masonry here, and over it these boards nailed fast into the cracks.' 'Horrible!' cried my poor mother. I had heard that all of the contents of the Cemetery of the Innocents had been tumbled into some of the openings of these catacombs. 'Mon Dieu,' I cried; 'they are full of the dead!'
"'It is the live rascals I care not to meet,' laughed the thief; 'as for the dead, they are dead. All their wants are supplied. They neither steal nor kill—and there are ways out—ways out—I am sure.'
"'Pray God, my good thief, that it may be as you say,' said my mother; 'but mon Dieu! one may wander far, they say, in these old quarries.' 'Let us see,' said the thief, and with a strong hand he tore away board after board, the rusted nails breaking and the rotten wood falling at his feet. There, before him and us, was a great, dark gap in the wall. Our thief held his lantern within it.
"'I see little; there is a descent. I must go and find out.'