“What you are doing is not at all nice. It is even indiscreet,” said Juliette, much to the functionary’s amusement. It was a sultry midsummer day. Said Juliette to her terrified mother: “May I not go and tell Blatier” (the gardener, who, with a scared look, was peeping through the window) “to cool some cider for these gentlemen?” Mme. Lambert made a sign of assent. A minute before, when she had wished to go into another room, a gendarme had prevented her. But no objection was offered to her little girl’s departure. All the while, however, that she was telling Blatier to draw water from the well she felt a gendarme’s eyes fixed upon her through the window. While the gardener was drawing the water, she went down into the cellar, brought up some bottles, placed them in a pail. Intentionally prolonging the operation, she went down to fetch another pail, then, turning round, made as if she would return slowly to the room. But no sooner was she out of the gendarme’s sight than with one bound, having taken off her shoes, she flew upstairs to the attic, seized the papers, slipped them into her pocket, and in a trice had put on her shoes again, was back in the sitting-room, having apparently come straight from her cider-cooling in the courtyard. M. le Procureur was still busily searching. Having examined the living-rooms, he and his escort searched the stable, the coach-house, the cellar. Then, leaving one gendarme below, he went up into the attic. “When father heard them go upstairs,” writes Juliette, “he rose, he looked very agitated, and I saw mother, saying to herself: ‛The papers must be there; we are lost.’ “Then, taking a glass of cider, I went up to father, whom the gendarme was closely observing. He put away the glass I offered him, but I, as if persuading him to drink, bent towards him and whispered: ‛Be calm. I have the papers.’ Father drank the glass of cider at one gulp. I embraced him. The gendarme was touched by our affection. Father clasped[25] me in his arms so tight that I thought I should have been stifled!...” The Procureur de la République came downstairs. Before leaving he said to Juliette: “Mademoiselle, I am glad to tell you that we have found nothing to compromise your father. Had we discovered proofs of the matters of which he stands accused it would have been serious. For your father’s name figures on the list of those liable to arrest, imprisonment, or even deportation. He is reputed a dangerous revolutionary and propagandist to boot.” “Thank you, sir,” replied Juliette. “As you are so fatherly to me, you, too, must have a daughter.” The Procureur smiled, but did not reply.