The Marquis handed him in silence the passport, with its emblematic figures supporting a shield, inscribed with the device, “Vivre libre ou mourir”—Minerva bearing the cap of liberty on a pike, and a female typifying the French constitution, seated on a lion. The crown which the latter held over the shield had been struck through with a pen, and the same fate had overtaken the crown surmounting the arms of France which accompanied the mayoral seal in red wax at the bottom. Louis’s lip curled as he observed it. “L’an 4 de la liberté,” he muttered scornfully, running his eye up to the date over Pétion’s signature, and passed on to peruse his own description. “I don’t know what the original portrait was like,” he remarked, returning the document, “but I don’t call this amended version very flattering. I suppose it was jealousy which led you to dock me of an inch of my height. However, Pierre Jourdain has a very convincing sound for a valet.” When the chaise drew up with a jerk at the Barrière de Versailles it was possibly on account of the hot July sun that no great alacrity was displayed in demanding credentials. A sleepy-looking official, followed by a couple of National Guards, did at last present himself at the left-hand window—Saint-Ermay’s—and to him the Marquis handed out the passport, throwing a severe glance at Louis, who seemed to be struggling with a most inopportune desire to laugh. The man read it yawning, asked a few questions, signed the paper, returned it, and, suddenly pulling himself together, shut the chaise door with a bang, and magnificently waved a dirty hand to the postilion. The horses sprang forward, the gateway slid past—they were out of Paris. “Why are you travelling under your own name?” asked the Vicomte abruptly, breaking a silence which was not uneloquent of tension past. “Why not?” retorted Gilbert. “You observe that there is no title. Moreover, I once met Terrier de Monciel before he was Minister of the Interior, and though, as it happened, he did not recognise me when I went to have the passport countersigned, I thought that the fewer lies I told him the better.” “Especially as we shall probably want quite a new stock later on. I wonder,” observed Louis thoughtfully, looking at the strongly-cut profile beside him, “what you could best pass yourself off as at a pinch.”