Had our prisoner been on the outside of his cell at that particular time, he would have seen a movement on the part of the sentinel strange and unusual. This sentinel had softly and noiselessly followed the warder to that door, had stood very near while he looked in at the wicket, and then, when he had started on to the next cell, he leaped upon him as a cat would strike its prey. A single blow of a sand-bag upon the warder's head felled him to the granite pavement as though a lightning-bolt had smitten him. On the next instant the sentinel was upon his knees, those knees upon the fallen man's breast, with a folded napkin, in which was a broad, flat, fine sponge, pressed tightly over the mouth and nostrils. A brief space so, then the guardsman took from his breast pocket a small flask and renewed the chloroform in the sponge.
"A SPONGE PRESSED TIGHTLY OVER THE MOUTH."
Otho Maximilian had heard the opening of the wicket, and had seen the face that had peered in upon him. He had again closed his eyes, when he heard a dull, heavy thud, as though a ponderous body had fallen upon the adamantine floor. The sound was so unusual, so strange and unaccountable, that he was startled—not with fear, but with a nameless, shapeless spectre of the unseen. He arose and bent his ear attentively.
Ere long he heard the light clatter of a key as it was inserted into the lock of his door, and presently the door was opened and a man came in—a man habited in the uniform of the National Guard.
"—Sh!" whispered the guardsman. "Speak not, but do as I bid you. Throw off that ragged blouse. Sacré!—will you obey? Bah!—it is a friend! Now act, and quickly!"
"What!—you?—Mar——"
"Will you stop your tongue and obey? We will talk by-and-by."
Without another word the prisoner pulled off his blouse and threw it aside. At the same time the guardsman stripped off his uniform, threw off waist-belt and baldric, with the sword; then the coat with its gaudy facings; then the pants, gaiters, and the shoes; and he bade the other to get himself into them with all possible dispatch, which was done.
And yet the guardsman stood in full uniform as before. He had come doubly clad, even to the hat and an extra pompon. And there was still another dress inside the uniform in which he now appeared. No wonder he had looked strangely rotund and squat when we met him in M. Rameau's wine-shop.