Part 72 (2/2)

”My sword,” went on La Mole.

”_Ich verstehe nicht_,” repeated the janitor.

”--which I left--my sword which I left”--

”_Ich verstehe nicht._”

”--in this house, in which I spent the night.”

”_Gehe zum Teufel!_” (Go to the devil!) And he slammed the door in La Mole's face.

”By Heaven!” cried La Mole, ”if I had this sword I have just asked for, I would gladly put it through that fellow's body. But I have not, and this must wait for another day.”

Thereupon La Mole continued his way to the Rue Roi de Sicile, took about fifty steps to the right, then to the left again, and came to the Rue Tizon, a little street running parallel with the Rue Cloche Percee, and like it in every way. More than this, scarcely had he gone thirty steps before he came upon the door with the large nails, with its shed and loop-holes, the two steps and the wall. One would have said that the Rue Cloche Percee had returned to see him pa.s.s by.

La Mole then reflected that he might have mistaken his right for his left, and he knocked at this door, to make the same demand he had made at the other. But this time he knocked in vain. The door was not opened.

Two or three times La Mole made the same trip, which naturally led him to the idea that the house had two entrances, one on the Rue Cloche Percee, the other on the Rue Tizon.

But this conclusion, logical as it was, did not bring him back his sword, and did not tell him where his friend was. For an instant he conceived the idea of buying another sword and cutting to pieces the wretched janitor who so persistently refused to speak anything but German, but he thought this porter belonged to Marguerite, and that if Marguerite had chosen thus, it was because she had her reasons, and that it might be disagreeable for her to be deprived of him.

Now La Mole would not have done anything disagreeable to Marguerite for anything in the world.

Fearing to yield to this temptation he returned about two o'clock in the afternoon to the Louvre.

As his room was not occupied this time he could enter it. The matter was urgent enough as far as his doublet was concerned, which, as the queen had already remarked to him, was considerably torn.

He therefore at once approached his bed to subst.i.tute the beautiful pearl-gray doublet for the one he wore, when to his great surprise the first thing he perceived near the pearl-gray doublet was the famous sword which he had left in the Rue Cloche Percee.

La Mole took it and turned it over and over.

It was really his.

”Ah! ah!” said he, ”is there some magic under all this?” Then with a sigh, ”Ah! if poor Coconnas could be found like my sword!”

Two or three hours after La Mole had ceased his circular tramp around the small double house, the door on the Rue Tizon had opened. It was about five o'clock in the evening, consequently night had closed in.

A woman wrapped in a long cloak trimmed with fur, accompanied by an attendant, came out of the door which was held open by a duenna of forty, and hurrying rapidly along to the Rue Roi de Sicile, knocked at a small door of the Hotel Argenson, which opened for her; she then left by the main entrance of the same hotel which opened on to the Vieille Rue du Temple, went toward a small postern in the Hotel de Guise, unlocked it with a key which she carried in her pocket, and disappeared.

Half an hour later a young man with bandaged eyes left by the same door of the small house, guided by a woman who led him to the corner of the Rue Geoffroy Lasnier and La Mortellerie. There she asked him to count fifty steps and then remove his bandage.

The young man carefully obeyed the order, and when he had counted fifty, removed the handkerchief from his eyes.

”By Heaven!” cried he, looking around. ”I'll be hanged if I know where I am! Six o'clock!” he cried, as the clock of Notre-Dame struck, ”and poor La Mole, what can have become of him? Let us run to the Louvre, perhaps they may have news of him there.”

Coconnas hurriedly descended the Rue La Mortellerie, and reached the gates of the Louvre in less time than it would have taken an ordinary horse. As he went he jostled and knocked down the moving hedge of brave bourgeois who were walking peacefully about the shops of the Place de Baudoyer, and entered the palace.

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