“No, monsieur, he will not hunt in the prisons for a man whom he fancies to be running on the roads. Monsieur de Sartines, even, will have no official knowledge of your arrest. I am not arresting you under your own name. I have, in fact, mistaken you for one Justin La Porte, a gentleman under suspicion of conspiracy and of being a frequenter of certain political clubs. Should Monsieur de Choiseul, by some ill chance, find you at Vincennes, the whole blame would fall on me. I would be dismissed the service for my ‘mistake.’” Rochefort, as he listened to all this, began to take counsel with himself. His madness and anger against the world had received a check under the hand of Lavenne. Lavenne was perhaps the only person in the world who had ever called him to order, thwarted his will without raising his anger, and made him think. Lavenne himself, in his person, his manner and his life was a criticism on Rochefort. This man who never drank—or only sipped half a glass of wine as a matter of ceremony—who belonged to the people, who dressed soberly, and whose life was very evidently one of hard work and devotion to duty, commanded respect just as he commanded confidence. But there was more than that. Lavenne had about him something of Fate, and an Authority beyond even that of the Hôtel de Sartines. One could never imagine this man reasoning wildly or acting foolishly, nor could one very well imagine him allowing a personal motive to rule his line of action. There was something disturbing in his calmness, as though one discerned beneath everything a mechanism moving with the unswerving aim of a mechanism towards the goal appointed by its constructor. “Even now, monsieur,” continued Lavenne, “you would have Monsieur de Choiseul’s hand upon your shoulder had you not, urged by some good fairy, taken refuge in the very last place where his agents and spies would look for you; they are ransacking the streets, they are posted at the gates, they are all hunting for a man who is running away, and you have outwitted them simply by not running away, but coming to breakfast at the Café de Régence.” “And yet you found me,” said Rochefort. “Because, monsieur, I belong to the Hôtel de Sartines, not to the Hôtel de Choiseul.” “Let us be perfectly clear,” said Rochefort. “The agents of Choiseul are hunting for me, the agents of Sartines are trying to hide me.” “Not quite so, monsieur: the agents of Choiseul are hunting for you, and all the agents of the Hôtel de Sartines must assist the agents of Choiseul if they are called upon by them to arrest Monsieur de Rochefort. But _one_ agent of the Hôtel de Sartines, that is to say I, myself, is trying to hide Monsieur de Rochefort, and he is doing so at the instigation of Monsieur de Sartines.”