On those days Ralph was exceedingly bored. Therefore at Mantes, finding himself once more alone, he hired a bicycle and for some hours rode about the country. After having lunched at an inn, he saw on the outskirts of a small country town a great mansion, the garden of which was swarming with people. He went to it. They were selling by auction some beautiful furniture and plate. Idly he strolled round the house. The garden at the end of one of the wings was empty and against the wall was a thick shrubbery. Without considering what impulse urged him to the act, Ralph, seeing a ladder hanging against the garden wall, set it up against the house, climbed it, and slipped a leg over the sill of an open window. There came a faint cry from inside the room; and he saw the startled face of Josephine. She recovered herself on the instant and said in a perfectly composed voice: “Oh, it’s you, Ralph, is it? I was just admiring a collection of beautifully bound little books. Wonders! And of an extraordinary rarity!” That was all they said. Ralph examined the books and slipped three Elzevirs into his pocket while the Countess without Ralph’s perceiving it, helped herself to some coins from a glass case. They went down the main staircase and took their departure. In all that crowd no one took any notice of them. Three hundred yards down the road the carriage was waiting for them. After that, at Pointoise, at Saint Germain, at Paris, where the _Nonchalante_, moored to the quay in front of the prefecture of police, continued to serve them as an abode, they “operated” together. Together but in such a fashion that neither could see the other’s actions. “Let us turn our eyes away and say nothing about it,” Josephine Balsamo had said. A supreme modesty which spared them the sight of a mean action. If the reserved nature and the enigmatic soul of the Countess de Cagliostro found a perfectly natural expression in the accomplishment of these tasks, the impulsive nature of Ralph little by little gained the upper hand; and every time the operation finished in bursts of laughter. Success provoked in him veritable fits of hilarity. “Since I’ve turned my back on the path of virtue, I may just as well take it lightly as not, and certainly not in the funereal way in which you do, Josine,” he said airily. At every new essay he discovered in himself unexpected talents and resources of which he had never dreamt. Sometimes, in a shop, on a race-course, at the theater, his companion heard a gentle murmur of joy and saw a watch in her lover’s hands, or a new pin in his cravat--and always the same coolness, always the serenity of an innocent man whom no danger can threaten.