"Yes," I said drily, "a little."
"Well, he is here, or he is not," the landlord answered, shaking his head. "It is impossible to say."
"Why?" I asked. "Does he not live here?"
"Yes, he lives here; at the Port d'Auguste on the old wall near the Capuchins. But----" he looked round and then continued mysteriously, "he goes out, where he has never gone in, Monsieur! And he has a house in the Amphitheatre, and it is the same there. And some say that the Capuchins is only another house of his. And if you go to the Cabaret de la Vierge, and give his name--you pay nothing."
He said this with many nods, and then seemed on a sudden to think that he had said too much, and hurried away. Asking for them, I learned that M. de Géol and Buton, failing to get a room there, had gone to the Ecu de France; but I was not very sorry to be rid of them for the time, and accepting the host's offer, I went to the eating-room, and there made myself as comfortable as two hard chairs and the excitement of my thoughts permitted.
The one thing, the one subject that absorbed me was Louis' behaviour, and the strange and abrupt change I had marked in it. He had been glad to see me, his hand had leaped to meet mine, I had read the old affection in his eyes; and then--then on a sudden, in a moment he had frozen into surly, churlish antagonism, an antagonism that had taken Madame Catinot by surprise, and was not without a touch of remorse, almost of horror. It could not be that she was dead? It could not be that Denise--no, my mind failed to entertain it. But I rose, trembling at the thought, and paced the room until daylight; listening to the watchman's cry, and the mournful hours, and the occasional rush of hurrying feet, that spoke of the perturbed city. What to me were Froment, or the red or the white or the tricolour, veto or no veto, endowment or disendowment, in comparison to that?
The house stirred at last, but I had still to wait till noon before I could see Madame Catinot. I spent the interval in an aimless walk through the town. At another time the things I saw must have filled me with wonder; at another time the hoary, gloomy ring of the Arènes, rising in tiers of frowning arches, high above the squalid roofs that leaned against it--and choked within by a Ghetto of the like, huddled where prefects once sat, and the Emperor's colours flew victorious round the circle--must have won my admiration by its vastness; the Maison Carrée by its fair proportions; the streets by the teeming crowds that filled them, and stood about the cabarets, and read the placards on the walls. But I had only thought for Louis, and my love, and the lagging minutes. At the first stroke of twelve I knocked at Madame Catinot's door; the last saw me in her presence.
It needed but a look at her face, and my heart sank; the thanks I was preparing to utter died on my lips as I gazed at her. She on her part was agitated. For a moment we were both silent.
At last, "I see that you have bad news for me, Madame," I said, striving to smile, and bear myself bravely.
"The worst, I fear," she said pitifully, smoothing her skirt. "For I have none, Monsieur."