“‘Mme. Houdry had immediately recognized her husband’s head, and the clerk himself examined it more closely, to be sure that it was the head of his master. It was a well-cut head—well refined, well scalded, well scraped. The moustache and hair had been shaved, as they should be, and but for something unforeseen, if need be, the head of the butcher would have passed for the head of a calf. “‘The clerk in his turn fainted, and let the head of M. Houdry roll away. “‘Some minutes later the tragedy was discovered, judging from the disturbance in the quarter.’ “The journalist,” said Théophraste, “was not of the opinion that the calf had decapitated the butcher, and that also was put before Cartouche’s name—that poor Cartouche.” He shrugged his shoulders once more, and then, having raised his eyes above the paper, he sought in the two corners of the dining-room, where M. Lecamus and his wife had taken refuge. They had disappeared. He called them and they did not answer. He tried to open the door of the landing, and it would not open. He then rushed to the chimney, which was large enough for him to get up, and scaled it with the same facility as he had descended the chimney when the boiler was beginning to boil at M. Houdry’s, the same morning that he had decapitated that unfortunate man. CHAPTER XXVI _Théophraste Again Hears of His Treasures_ |THE clamber over the roofs of the Rue Ge-rondo on a cold rainy night had a physical and moral effect on Théophraste. He had taken cold and was suffering in consequence. From a moral point of view it had made him change his whole view of these events. While he had been reading the accounts of these crimes with which the new Cartouche had been terrifying Paris, he had shown a callous indifference, but now he commenced to hold himself responsible for many of the atrocities, and especially for the murder of M. Houdry, which he had before facetiously blamed on the calf. He often recalled nocturnal visits by the route he was now following, and several bloody crimes came back to his memory, disgusting him, and making him weep bitter tears of useless remorse. It was, however, too late. In spite of all his sufferings, in spite of M. de la Nox’s invocations, and the torture they had submitted him to, Cartouche was not dead.