“Oh, Adolphe, what a wonderful thing memory is! Truly I do not know why I said that _you_ called it the Inn of the Harp, unless in my mind you are representing a friend whom I had, who was as good as you, and whom I loved as well as you, whose name was Va-de-Bon Cœur. By the Thunder of the Breast, but he was a handsome young fellow! He was a sergeant of the French Guards, and he was my lieutenant. I must tell you, my dear Adolphe, that I commanded a considerable number of French Guardsmen. At the time of my arrest, one hundred and fifty non-commissioned officers, soldiers of the French Guard, hid themselves, and disappeared over to the colonies. They dreaded lest I should compromise them. They were wrong, however, for torture could not make me speak. However, let me leave those melancholy moments, and come back to the beautiful September nights. We will proceed to the time when it was customary for the Parisians to take up their new abodes. The Regent showed still more anger against me and M. d’Argenson, when he learned about the escapade against the Spanish Ambassador. Imagine his fury as I turned my attentions to him. Va-de-Bon Cœur, being on guard at the Palais Royal, carried off two vermilion flambeaux, which the Duke of Orleans prized very highly. The Regent was so afraid of being robbed that instead of wearing silver-faced buckles and sword handles, he resolved to substitute carved steel. On the first day that he carried one of that kind, I, Cartouche, stole it from him as he was leaving the opera house. The next day I sent it back to him in pieces, and I taunted him about his apparent avarice, and upbraided him, that he, the greatest man in France, should wish to deprive his unfortunate confrères, the silversmiths, of a livelihood. “He answered me publicly by proclaiming that he was very anxious to know me, and that he would give from his own pocket 20,000 pounds to whoever would bring Cartouche to him. The next day, as he walked to Saint Germain and was breakfasting in the castle, he found under his napkin a message of which you will readily see the sense: ‘My lord, you can see me for nothing. It may be to-night, at midnight, behind the Anne of Austria Wall in the forest, where Cartouche will expect you. You are brave. Come alone. If you come accompanied, you run the danger of death.’ “At midnight, I awaited the Regent; twelve o’clock was still sounding in the Loges, when the Regent appeared. The moonlight made the forest seem like fairyland—enchanted, such as one sees at the theater. The forest, a marvelous, transparent blue, seemed bereft of all its branches, of all its foliage, of all its thickets.