Louis had enough on his mind at this moment, however, to sober even his persistent gaiety. In the first place, he was himself, along with nearly all his friends—and knew it well—in the most imminent personal danger. The vessel launched by the young ultra-Royalists to be the ark of the drowning monarchy was vastly more like to prove the coffin of all the crew. A day’s research had sufficed to establish its unseaworthiness. In the second place, the inevitable parting with Lucienne was now upon him. And though he had said good-bye to her on the day when honour demanded it, yet in his constant visits to the Tuileries he had sometimes caught sight of her; and though all the time he was uneasy as to her personal safety in Paris, still the day when she must leave it was always not yet, so that she still shed a dim fragrance over his existence, like a flower out of reach. But the day of transplanting had come at last. He got up and strolled to the door. Outside, on the verge of the garden, were the tables from one of which Camille Desmoulins had hounded on the populace to the destruction of the Bastille nearly three years ago. To-day a couple of young men of his own stamp were sitting at the nearest, each with a second chair on whose rungs he rested his feet. One of them wore a waistcoat powdered with fleur-de-lys, and a minute tricolour cockade at the back of his hat—a situation chosen to show his contempt for the emblem. Pitched battles between the _jeunesse dorée_ and the Jacobin faction had given the Café de Foy for the time being to the Royalists, and a lively zest was lent to its occupation by the knowledge that to-morrow it might be closed, or raided again by the enemy. Jousserand, the proprietor, good peaceable man, had put up the price of his liquid refreshments, a change which had made for a more aristocratic clientele; but the cap of liberty had before now been hung up in the Café de Foy. The Vicomte de Saint-Ermay, acknowledging the salutation of his acquaintances, searched among the shifting groups in the garden for the sight of his cousin. All the other cafés were in full swing, and it was difficult to distinguish an acquaintance among the throngs that surged round the Grand Café or the Café de Valois, on the opposite side, or the Café de Chartres and the Grotte Lyrique at the other end, under the Galerie de Beaujolais. As he gazed the young man with the cockade asked him laughing if he were reviving the once familiar jest of last summer, when a young Royalist would mount daily to the belvedere of the Café de Foy under pretence of looking whether the army of the _émigrés_ were not yet advancing from Coblentz. Louis replied a trifle absently, and at that moment caught sight of his cousin’s tall figure passing in front of the Jacobin Café Corazza. He waited until he was sure that Gilbert had seen him, and returned to the table in the corner which he had quitted.