Along the boulevards he kept him in view at a distance, and not much caring whether he lost track of him or no; but when the Functionary turned up a cross street, the young man closed in on his quarry. He had no particular suspicion even now; a mere instinct urged him to dog the man's heels. Monsieur Bargemont wheeled to the right, into a fairly broad street, empty and badly lighted by petroleum flares that supplied the place of the gas lamps. It was the one street Jean knew better than another. He had been there so often and often! The shape of the doors, the colour of the shop-fronts, the lettering on the sign-boards, everything about it was familiar; not a thing in it, down to the night-bell at the chemist's and druggist's, but called up memories, associations, to touch him. The footsteps of the two men echoed in the silence. Monsieur Bargemont looked round, advanced a few paces more and rang at a door. Jean Servien had now come up with him and stood beside him under the archway. It was the same door he had kissed one night of desperation, Gabrielle's door. It opened; Jean took a step forward and Monsieur Bargemont, going in first, left it open, thinking the National Guard there was a tenant going home to his lodging. Jean slipped in and climbed two flights of the dark staircase. Monsieur Bargemont ascended to the third floor and rang at a door on the landing, which was opened. Jean could hear Gabrielle's voice saying: "How late you are coming home, dear; I have sent Rosalie to bed; I was waiting up for you, you see." The man replied, still puffing and panting with his exertions: "Just fancy, they wanted to pitch me into the river, those scoundrels! But never you mind, I've brought you something mighty rare and precious--a pot of butter." "Like Little Red Ridinghood," laughed Gabrielle's voice. "Come in and you shall tell me all about it.... Hark! do you hear?" "What, the guns? Oh! that never stops." "No, the noise of a fall on the stairs." "You're dreaming!" "Give me the candle, I'm going to look." Monsieur Bargemont went down two or three steps and saw Jean stretched motionless on the landing. "A drunkard," he said; "there's so many of them! They were drunkards, those chaps who wanted to drown me." He was holding his light to Jean's ashy face, while Gabrielle, leaning over the rail, looked on: "It's not a drunken man," she said; "he is too white. Perhaps it is a poor young fellow dying of hunger. When you're brought down to rations of bread and horseflesh----" Then she looked more carefully under frowning brows, and muttered: "It's very queer, it's really very queer!" "Do you know him?" asked Bargemont. "I am trying to remember----" But there was no need to try; already she had recalled it all--how her hand had been kissed at the gate of the little house at Bellevue.