"Thy card, citizen!"
"The deuce!" said the thief, as he turned. "This gets monotonous. Mon Dieu, the marquis!" he exclaimed.
"Hush! Your card. You are followed—watched. There is this one chance." Francis produced his card. The marquis murmured, "Take care; obey me." Holding the card in his hand, he called authoritatively to a municipal guard who was passing. The man stopped, but no one else paused. Curiosity was perilous.
"This good citizen is followed by that man yonder—the one with the torn bonnet. I know the citizen. Here is his card and mine. Just tell that fellow to be careful"; and he slipped his own card of safety into the guard's hand, and under it three louis. The guard hesitated; then he glanced at the card.
"'T is in order, and countersigned by Vadier of the Great Committee. These spies are too busy; I will settle the fellow. Good morning, citizens."
They moved away quietly, in no apparent haste. As they were turning a corner, the thief looked back.
"I am a lost man, monsieur!" He saw, far away, the man of the torn red bonnet, and with him Quatre Pattes. She was evidently in a rage. He understood at once. In the thieves' quarter denunciations were not in favor. She knew too well the swift justice of this bivouac of outcasts to risk being suspected as a traitor to its code. The night before, he had been unable to give her money, and had again refused to sell his weapons. She had angrily reminded him that he was in her power, and he had for the first time declared that he would let the Cité settle with her. He had been rash, and now, too late, he knew it.
He hastily explained his sad case to the disguised gentleman, and was on the point of telling him that this Quatre Pattes was that Mme. Quintette who had once been his agent, and would probably be an enemy not to be despised. He glanced at the marquis, and, wisely or not, held his tongue.
"We must part here," said the gentleman. He had hesitated when chance led him to the neighborhood of the thief in trouble; but he was a courageous man, and disliked to owe to an inferior any such service as François had more than once rendered him. Vadier's sign manual on his own card of safety was an unquestioned assurance of patriotism; it had cost him a round sum, but it had its value.
When he said, "I must leave you," the thief returned: