“_Par exemple!_ I can shoot a hundredweight of bolts, it seems, so as not to wake a weasel. I made no noise to deaf ears. But, for thyself, monsieur--He that would steal corn must be careful his sack has no holes in it. And now I’ll wager thou’st dusted thy glittering filings out into the sunbeams, and a sentry, with pistols and a long musket, pacing the cobbles down there!” “_Soyez tranquille!_ I have all here in my pocket.” He put down the platter, shrugged his shoulders, and came on tiptoe to the window. “Well, it is excellent,” he whispered grudgingly--“if only thy caution matched thy skill.” Then he came close up to me. “I have news,” he muttered. “All is in preparation. It needs only that thou play’st thy part silently and surely. A moment’s decision and the game is thine.” “But, the sentry, say’st thou?” “He will be withdrawn. What, is it not the eve of the _Décadi_?[2] To-night, the wine-shops; to-morrow, full suburbs and an empty Paris, but for thee the Public Accuser with his questions.” “And why should he not visit me to-day?” “Rest assured. He hath a double baking to occupy him.” A noise sounded in the corridor. The man put his finger to his lips, pointed significantly at the remainder litter about the sill, stole to the door, jangled his keys viciously and bellowed at me: “Thou shalt have that or nothing! _Saint Sacrement_, but the dainty bellies of these upstarts!”--and off he went, slamming the door after him, and grumbling till he was out of hearing. “Excellent nameless one!” I cried to myself; and so, having most scrupulously removed every trace of my work, I fell, while attacking with appetite the meal left for me, into a sort of luminous meditation upon the alluring prospect half opened out to my vision. “And whence, in the name of God,” I marvelled, “issues this unknown influence that thus exerts itself on my behalf; and by what process of gratitude can my jailer, in these days of a general repudiation of obligations, have attached himself to a cause that, on the face of it, seems a purely quixotic one?” Then, “Oh, merciful Heaven!” I thought, “can it be possible that set in the far haze of a narrow vista of hope, an image--to whose wistful absorption into the Paradise of dreams I have sought to discipline myself--yet yearns to and beckons me from the standpoint of its own material sweetness? I see the smile on its mouth, the lift of its arms; I hear the little cry of welcome wafted to me. My God, the cry!” All in an instant some shock of association seemed to stun my brain. The cry--the single cry that had issued upon my condemnation in the hall of Justice! Had it not been the very echo of that I had once heard uttered by a poor swineherd fallen into the hands of savages?