Cocardasse amplified: "My letter told me to be outside the Inn of the Three Graces, near Neuilly, on a certain day--this day--to serve the Prince of Gonzague." Passepoil nodded again. "So did mine." Cocardasse continued: "Mine enclosed a draft on the Bank of Marseilles to pay expenses." Passepoil noted a point of difference: "Mine was on the Bank of Calais." "I suppose Gonzague wants all that are left of us," Cocardasse said, thoughtfully. Passepoil sighed significantly. "There aren't many." Cocardasse looked as gloomy as was possible for one of his rubicund countenance and jolly bearing. "Lagardere has kept his word." "Staupitz was killed at Seville," Passepoil murmured, as one who begins a catalogue of disasters. Cocardasse continued: "Faenza was killed at Burgos." Passepoil went on: "Saldagno at Toledo." Cocardasse took up the tale: "Pinto at Valladolid." Passepoil concluded the catalogue: "Joel at Grenada, Pepe at Cordova." "All with the same wound," Cocardasse commented, with a curious solemnity in his habitually jovial voice. Passepoil added, lugubriously: "The thrust between the eyes." Cocardasse summed up, significantly: "The thrust of Nevers." The pair were silent for an instant, looking at each other with something like dismay upon their faces, and their minds were evidently busy with old days and old dangers. Passepoil broke the silence. "They didn't make much by their blood-money." "Yes," said Cocardasse; "but we, who refused to hunt Lagardere, we are alive." Passepoil cast a melancholy glance over his own dingy habiliments and then over the garments of Cocardasse, garments which, although glowing enough in color, were over-darned and over-patched to suggest opulence. "In a manner," he said, dryly. Cocardasse drew himself up proudly and slapped his chest. "Poor but honest." Passepoil allowed a faint smile, expressive of satisfaction, to steal over his melancholy countenance. "Thank Heaven, in Paris we can't meet Lagardere." Cocardasse appeared plainly to share the pleasure of his old friend. "An exile dare not return," he said, emphatically, with the air of a man who feels sure of himself and of his words. But it is the way of destiny very often, even when a man is surest of himself and surest of his words, to interpose some disturbing factor in his confident calculations, to make some unexpected move upon the chess-board of existence, which altogether baffles his plans and ruins his hopes. So many people had crossed the bridge that morning that it really seemed little less than probable that the appearance of a fresh pedestrian upon its arch could have any serious effect upon the satisfactory reflections of the two bravos. Yet at that moment a man did appear upon the bridge, who paused and surveyed Cocardasse and Passepoil, whose backs were towards him, with a significant smile.