"You must return at once to Paris, my friend, for you must arrive there before Gardin. You will need all the influence of your own military position and the aid of your most powerful friends to enable you to meet the charges that man will bring against you for frustrating the arrest. I will try to find mademoiselle at La Haye, and will meet you at our lodgings as soon as possible." Robert grasped his companion's hand warmly. "I shall never forget your friendship, Gaillard." "You may remember it as long as you like if you will not refer to it. I can never repay you for your many acts of friendship toward me." "But your profession," interrupted Tournay, "how can you leave the theatre all this time? How will your place be filled?" "Oh, it will be filled very well. I arranged all that before leaving; whether I shall find it vacant or not when I return is another matter. But it does not trouble me; let it not trouble you, my friend." And with a cheerful wave of the hand, Gaillard departed. CHAPTER VIII PÈRE LOUCHET'S GUESTS In the southern part of the province of Touraine, in the village of La Haye, lived Pierre Louchet, or as his neighbors called him, Père Louchet. Logically speaking, Louchet, being a bachelor, had no right to this title, but as he took a paternal interest in all the young people of the village, they had fitted him with this sobriquet, partly in a spirit of gentle irony and partly in affectionate recognition of his fatherly attitude toward them. Père Louchet lived alone in a little cottage that was always as neat and well-kept as if some feminine hand held sway there. Indeed, if he fell sick, or was too busy with the crops on his small farm to pay proper attention to his household duties, there were plenty of women from the neighboring cottages who were glad to come in and make his gruel or sweep up his hearth, so it was not on account of any unpopularity with the gentler sex that he lived on in a state of celibacy. In a society where marriage was almost universal, such an eccentricity as that exhibited by Pierre Louchet in remaining single did not escape comment. Indeed at the age of fifty he was as often bantered on the subject as he had been at thirty. But neither the raillery and innuendoes of the neighbors nor the entreaties, threats, and cajoleries of his sister, Jeanne Maillot, had ever moved him to take a wife. "It's a family disgrace," said Jeanne, putting her red hands on her hips, and regarding her elder brother with a look of scorn. "Here am I ten years younger than you, and with five children. And Marie who lives at Fulgent has eight. And you, the only man in our family, sit there by the chimney and smoke your pipe contentedly, and let the young girls of La Haye grow up around you one after another, marry, settle down, and have daughters who are old enough to be married by this time; and you do nothing to keep up the name of Louchet." "'T is not much of a name," replied Pierre.