"Here's your measure! Count carefully fourteen litres and a half--that done, wait quietly till Casimir turns up: your part in the story will be forty sous, and not to rouse his suspicions; then, while he goes up the avenue de Valois to take up the Princess, you and Ernestine have to gallop off to the corner of the rue de Monceau and the rue de Teheran, then ... wait!" * * * * * Mimile, with the agility of a monkey and the ability of a first-rate chauffeur--for there was nothing he did not know in the way of applied mechanics, as became an aviator--executed to the letter his accomplice's orders. The Beard meanwhile had returned to the tavern and Casimir. * * * * * Suddenly, all was activity in the world of carriages and coachmen! The great ball was drawing to its end. Casimir was once more in possession of his motor, and had generously tipped his understudy: thereupon the hooligan had made off as fast as his legs could carry him. Ernestine joined him at the appointed spot: there the two rogues waited. "Listen!" cried big Ernestine some fifteen minutes later. She stared in the direction of the boulevard Malesherbes, with neck outstretched and straining eyeballs. At last, after an agonising wait, she and Mimile saw the carriages driving by. "Attention!" cried big Ernestine in a sharp whisper ... "everybody's on the move at last!" * * * * * The Beadle and the Beard, hidden in the crowd which thronged the approaches to the Thomery mansion, awaited the departure of Princess Sonia Danidoff: the idea of this rich prey excited them. Then as they stared at the first outflow of departing guests, the two bandits could not but notice that far from looking gay and animated as people do who have danced and supped well, these guests of Thomery showed pale, dejected faces: in fact, they had all the appearance of people under the influence of some tragic emotion. "They look pretty down in the mouth, don't they?" whispered the Beard in the Beadle's ear. "That's a fact! You'd think they were returning from a funeral!" Then a vague rumour began to circulate; confirmation followed, spread insensibly within the Thomery mansion, was passed on by the lackeys, spread from the pavements to the avenue. People whispered of incomprehensible things incredible, but which little by little took definite shape. It was said that the Thomery ball had just become the scene of an accident, of a drama, of a robbery, of a crime!... The police, and of the highest grade, had intervened.... The news spread like a train of ignited gunpowder.... Nevertheless, if Thomery's guests were cognisant of the details, they did not take the beggars and pickpockets into their confidence: among the light-fingered gentry conjectures were rife.