Two of them hastened to the house of Citizeness Privat. They found her in bed. Awakened from her sleep, she could only give meagre information about her lodgers. There were two of them; one, she thought, was still in the room across the hall. A tall gendarme opened the door and walked in without ceremony. He found the room empty, although a few articles of feminine apparel indicated that it had been occupied recently. "Hem!" sniffed the tall gendarme, "women!" Then he called in his companions, and they proceeded to examine everything in the hope of finding a clue. At that moment Robert Tournay, Edmé, and Agatha were approaching the Rue d'Arcis. "It is only a step from here," said Tournay encouragingly as they crossed the bridge St. Michel. "Once there we cannot be safer anywhere in Paris. I know of the place from a fellow prisoner in the Luxembourg." They passed through a narrow passageway and underneath some houses, and emerged into the Rue d'Arcis. Crossing the street, and looking carefully in both directions to see if they were unobserved, Tournay struck seven quick low notes with the knocker on the door. They waited in silence for some time; then Tournay repeated the knocking a little louder than before. They waited again and listened intently. Edmé's teeth began to chatter with nervous excitement, and Tournay looked once more apprehensively up and down the street. "Who knocks?" was the question breathed gently through a small aperture in the door. "From Raphael," whispered Tournay, "open quickly." "Enter." The door swung inward on its hinges, and the three fugitives hastened to accept the hospitality offered them. It was an old man who answered their summons and who closed the door carefully after them. He now stood before them shading with his palm a candle, which the draft, blowing through the large empty corridors, threatened to extinguish altogether. The dancing flame threw grotesque shadows on the wall. As the light played upon the features of the old man, first touching his white beard and then shining upon his serene brow, Edmé thought she looked upon a face familiar to her in the past, but, no sign of recognition appearing in the eyes that met her gaze, she attributed it to fancy. "Your name is Beaurepaire?" inquired Tournay. "That is my name," was the old man's answer. In a few words Colonel Tournay told of his acquaintance with St. Hilaire, and explained how, had their plan of escape succeeded, they would have come there together. Unfortunately he alone had escaped,--and now came to ask that he and his two companions might remain there in hiding for a few days. "You came from Raphael," replied Beaurepaire with the dignity of an earlier time. "The length of your stay is to be determined by your own desire."