At last he learned that the time was near when he must go to Auteuil. His voice had been tested again, and he had been told that there was small hope of its return. He began to think of escape. Once he was sent alone on an errand to a shop near by. He lingered to see some street-jugglers, and paid for it with a day in a damp cellar. Within this sad home he now found only reproaches and unthanked labor. The choristers laughed at him, and the happier boys mocked his changed voice. On the day after his last experience of the cellar, he was told by Tomas to be ready to go to Auteuil, and was ordered once again to follow the steward to market. He took up the nets and went after him. The lad looked back at the choir-house. He meant to see it no more. He was now seventeen, and in the three years of his stay had learned many things, some good and some bad. They went past Notre Dame to the quai, and through rows of stalls along the shores of the Seine. Tomas soon filled the nets, which were hung over François’s shoulders. Meanwhile the chattering women, the birds and cages, the flowers, the moving, many-colored crowd, amused or pleased the boy, but by no means turned him from his purpose. "Come!" cried Tomas, and began to elbow his way through the noisy people on the river-bank. Presently François got behind him, and noting his chances with a ready eye, slipped through between the booths and darted up the Seine. *IV* _Of how the world used François, and of the reward of virtue. He makes his first friend._ When Tomas, having won his way out of the press about a fortune-teller, looked for François, there was a lost choir-boy and two days’ diet gone none knew whither—least of all the fugitive. He moved away with the speed of fear, and was soon in the somber network of narrow streets which in those days made a part of the Île de la Cité the refuge of the finest assortment of thieves, bravos, gypsies, and low women to be found in any capital of Europe. His scared looks and decent black suit betrayed him. An old fellow issued from a doorway like a spider. "Ha, ha, little thief!" he said; "I will buy thy plunder."