We tried to explain ourselves, and asked that they should examine carefully our persons, our countenances, our appearances, and compare them with those of the man whom I had arrested, and that they should not keep us till next day before rendering us the justice that was our due. But to all this the defenders of the country replied imperturbably that _by night all cats look grey_; and, consequently, one might easily be deceived, whereas, on the morrow, there would be _daylight_ on the matter. The decision was neither logical nor eloquent; but we were the weaker party. They made us, assaulted and assaulter alike, go into that part of the guard-house that is called the _violon_, and there was no help for it but to await the good pleasure of M. _le chef du poste._ We all leant up one against another, as people do in a carriage, and tried to sleep. As Adèle and her husband had taken one corner of the camp bed for themselves, there was one left for me. I gazed sadly at the woman for a long time; she was associated with the earliest recollections of my life, and now, apparently perfectly happy, she was falling asleep on the shoulder of another, to whom she spoke in accents of familiar intercourse. She had two children: motherhood had consoled her for her lost love. They both fell asleep; but neither the thief nor I slept at all. Soon my eyes tore themselves away from watching Adèle and her husband; my thoughts retraced their steps and I resumed my dream where it had been interrupted. I saw, in my mind's eye, the bas-relief of Mademoiselle de Fauveau as it hung fastened against the wall, and, in the guard-room of the boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, by the side of that woman and her husband, face to face with the thief who was to get three years' imprisonment at the next assizes, my imagination conjured up the first scenes of _Christine._ At eight next morning the police-officer entered, took down our depositions and addresses and then set us at liberty; whilst our friend the thief was immediately hustled off to the police station. I returned home to find my poor mother terribly upset. She, like myself, had never closed her eyes all night. I saw Adèle again once or twice during her stay in Paris; but, since that time, my imagination, if not my heart, has been the slave of a mistress who has supplanted all my past mistresses, and even done injury to those of later years. That mistress, or rather that master, was Art. CHAPTER VII Future landmarks--Compliments to the Duc de Bordeaux--_Vates_ --Cauchois-Lemaire's Orléaniste brochure--The lakeof Enghien--Colonel Bro's parrot--Doctor Ferrus--Morrisel--A tip-top funeral cortège --Hunting in full cry--An autopsy--Explanation of the death of the parrot