The Conspirators

"Ah, ah!" cried the abbe, "an instant, young man. What a hurry you are in! Open your eyes wide – so. Do you not recognize me?"

"Ah!" said D'Harmental, laughing, "it is you, abbe. You did well to stop me. I dreamed that I was arrested."

"A good sign," said the Abbe Brigaud: "you know that dreams always go by contraries. All will go well."

"Is there anything new?" asked D'Harmental.

"And if there were, how would you receive it?"

"I should be enchanted. A thing of this kind once undertaken, the sooner it is finished the better."

"Well, then," said Brigaud, drawing a paper from his pocket and presenting it to the chevalier, "read, and glorify the name of the Lord, for you have your wish."

D'Harmental took the paper, unfolded it as calmly as if it were a matter of no moment, and read as follows:

"Report of the 27th of March

    "Two in the Morning.

"To-night at ten o'clock the regent received a courier from London, who announces for to-morrow the arrival of the Abbe Dubois. As by chance the regent was supping with madame, the dispatch was given to him in spite of the late hour. Some minutes before, Mademoiselle de Chartres had asked permission of her father to perform her devotions at the Abbey of Chelles, and he had promised to conduct her there; but on the receipt of this letter his determination was changed and he has ordered the council to meet at noon.

"At three o'clock the regent will pay his majesty a visit at the Tuileries. He has asked for a tete-à-tete, for he is beginning to be impatient at the obstinacy of the Marechal de Villeroy, who will always be present at the interviews between the regent and his majesty. Report says that if this obstinacy continue, it will be the worse for the marshal.

"At six o'clock, the regent, the Chevalier de Simiane, and the Chevalier de Ravanne, will sup with Madame de Sabran."

"Ah, ah!" said D'Harmental; and he read the last sentence, weighing every word.

"Well, what do you think of this paragraph?" asked the abbe.

The chevalier jumped from his bed, put on his dressing-gown, took from his drawer a crimson ribbon, a hammer and a nail, and having opened his window (not without throwing a stolen glance at that of his neighbor), he nailed the ribbon on to the outer wall.

"There is my answer," said he.

"What the devil does that mean?"

"That means," said D'Harmental, "that you may go and tell Madame de Maine that I hope this evening to fulfill my promise to her. And now go away, my dear abbe, and do not come back for two hours, for I expect some one whom it would be better you should not meet."

The abbe, who was prudence itself, did not wait to be told twice, but pressed the chevalier's hand and left him. Twenty minutes afterward Captain Roquefinette entered.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE RUE DES BONS ENFANTS

The evening of the same day, which was Sunday, toward eight o'clock, at the moment when a considerable group of men and women, assembled round a street singer who was playing at the same time the cymbals with his knees and the tambourine with his hands, obstructed the entrance to the Rue de Valois, a musketeer and two of the light horse descended a back staircase of the Palais Royal, and advanced toward the Passage du Lycée, which, as every one knows, opened on to that street; but seeing the crowd which barred the way, the three soldiers stopped and appeared to take council. The result of their deliberation was doubtless that they must take another route, for the musketeer, setting the example of a new maneuver, threaded the Cour des Fontaines, turned the corner of the Rue des Bons Enfants, and walking rapidly – though he was extremely corpulent – arrived at No. 22, which opened as by enchantment at his approach, and closed again on him and his two companions.

At the moment when they commenced this little detour, a young man, dressed in a dark coat, wrapped in a mantle of the same color, and wearing a broad-brimmed hat pulled down over his eyes, quitted the group which surrounded the singer, singing himself, to the tune of Les Pendus, "Vingt-quatre, vingt-quatre, vingt-quatre," and advancing rapidly toward the Passage du Lycée, arrived at the further end in time to see the three illustrious vagabonds enter the house as we have said. He threw a glance round him, and by the light of one of the three lanterns, which lighted, or rather ought to have lighted, the whole length of the street, he perceived one of those immense coalheavers, with a face the color of soot, so well stereotyped by Greuze, who was resting against one of the posts of the Hotel de la Roche-Guyon, on which he had hung his bag. For an instant he appeared to hesitate to approach this man; but the coalheaver having sung the same air and the same burden, he appeared to lose all hesitation, and went straight to him.

"Well, captain," said the man in the cloak, "did you see them?"

"As plainly as I see you, colonel – a musketeer and two light horse; but I could not recognize them. However, as the musketeer hid his face in his handkerchief, I presume it was the regent."

"Himself; and the two light horse are Simiane and Ravanne."

"Ah, ah! my scholar," said the captain, "I shall have great pleasure in seeing him again: he is a good boy."

"At any rate, captain, take care he does not recognize you."

"Recognize me! It must be the devil himself to recognize me, accoutered as I am. It is you, rather, chevalier, who should take the caution. You have an unfortunately aristocratic air, which does not suit at all with your dress. However, there they are in the trap, and we must take care they do not leave it. Have our people been told?"

"Your people, captain. I know no more of them than they do of me. I quitted the group singing the burden which was our signal. Did they hear me? Did they understand me? I know nothing of it."

"Be easy, colonel. These fellows hear half a voice, and understand half a word."

Indeed, as soon as the man in the cloak had left the group, a strange fluctuation which he had not foreseen began to take place in the crowd, which appeared to be composed only of passers-by, so that the song was not finished, nor the collection received. The crowd dispersed. A great many men left the circle, singly, or two and two, turning toward each other with an imperceptible gesture of the hand, some by the Rue de Valois, some by the Cour des Fontaines, some by the Palais Royal itself, thus surrounding the Rue des Bons Enfants, which seemed to be the center of the rendezvous. In consequence of this maneuver, the intention of which it is easy to understand, there only remained before the singer ten or twelve women, some children, and a good bourgeois of about forty years old, who, seeing that the collection was about to begin again, quitted his place with an air of profound contempt for all these new songs, and humming an old pastoral which he placed infinitely above them. It seemed to him that several men as he passed them made him signs; but as he did not belong to any secret society or any masonic lodge, he went on, singing his favorite —

"Then let me go
And let me play
Beneath the hazel-tree,"

and after having followed the Rue St. Honoré to the Barriere des Deux Sergents, turned the corner and disappeared. Almost at the same moment, the man in the cloak, who had been the first to leave the group, reappeared, and, accosting the singer —

"My friend," said he, "my wife is ill, and your music will prevent her sleeping. If you have no particular reason for remaining here, go to the Place du Palais Royal, and here is a crown to indemnify you."

"Thank you, my lord," replied the singer, measuring the social position of the giver by his generosity. "I will go directly. Have you any commissions for the Rue Mouffetard?"

"No."

"Because I would have executed them into the bargain."

The man went away, and as he was at once the center and the cause of the meeting, all that remained disappeared with him. At this moment the clock of the Palais Royal struck nine. The young man drew from his pocket a watch, whose diamond setting contrasted strangely with his simple costume. He set it exactly, then turned and went into the Rue des Bons Enfants. On arriving opposite No. 24, he found the coalheaver.

"And the singer?" asked the latter.

"He is gone."

"Good."

"And the postchaise?" asked the man in the cloak.

"It is waiting at the corner of the Rue Baillif."

"Have they taken the precaution of wrapping the wheels and horses' hoofs in rags?"

"Yes."

"Very good. Now let us wait," said the man in the cloak.

"Let us wait," replied the coalheaver. And all was silent.