"Oh!" I said; and then I sat a moment, staring at him between the candles, my hand raised, a morsel on my fork. A wild extravagant thought had flashed into my mind. Two ladies from Cahors? From Cahors, of all places? "How do they call themselves?" I asked. "Corvas," he answered. "Oh! Corvas," I said, falling to eating again, and putting the morsel into my mouth. And I went on with my supper. "Yes. A merchant's wife, she says she is. But you shall see her." "I don't remember the name," I answered. "Still, you may know them," he rejoined, with the dull persistence of a man of few ideas. "It is just possible that we have made a mistake, for we found no papers in the carriage, and only one thing that seemed suspicious." "What was that?" "A red cockade." "A _red_ cockade?" "Yes," he answered. "The badge of the old Leaguers, you know." "But," I said, "I have not heard of any party adopting that." He rubbed his bald head a little doubtfully. "No," he said, "that is true. Still, it is a colour we don't like here. And two ladies travelling alone--alone, Monsieur! Then their driver, a half-witted fellow, who said that they had engaged him at Rodez, though he denied stoutly that he had seen the Capuchin, told two or three tales. However, if you will eat no more, M. le Vicomte, I will take you to see them. You may be able to speak for or against them." "If you do not think that it is too late?" I said, shrinking somewhat from the interview. "Prisoners must not be choosers," he answered, with an unpleasant chuckle. And he called from the door for a lantern and his cloak. "The ladies are not here, then?" I said. "No," he answered, with a wink. "Safe bind, safe find! But they have nothing to cry about. There are one or two rough fellows in the clink, so Babet, the jailer, has given them room in his house." At this moment the lantern came, and the Mayor having wrapped his portly person in a cloak, we passed out of the house. The square outside was utterly dark, such lights as had been burning when I arrived had been extinguished, perhaps by the wind, which was rising, and now blew keenly across the open space. The yellow glare of the lantern was necessary, but though it showed us a few feet of the roadway, and enabled us to pick our steps, it redoubled the darkness beyond; I could not see even the line of the roofs, and had no idea in what direction we had gone or how far, when M. Flandre halted abruptly, and, raising the lantern, threw its light on a greasy stone wall, from which, set deep in the stone-work, a low iron-studded door frowned on us. About the middle of the door hung a huge knocker, and above it was a small _grille_. "Safe bind, safe find!" the Mayor said again with a fat chuckle; but, instead of raising the knocker, he drew his stick sharply across the bars of the _grille_.