"Do you know," I asked, seeing that he had been supping, and was inclined to talk, "where the Marquis de St. Alais is living?" "No, Monsieur," he said. "I do not know the gentleman." "But he is here with his family." "Who is not here," he answered, shrugging his shoulders. Then in a lower tone, "Is he red, or--or the other thing, Monsieur?" "Red," I said boldly. "Ah! Well, there have been two or three gentlemen going to and fro between our M. Froment, and Turin and Montpellier. It is said that our Mayor would have arrested them long ago if he had done his duty. But he is red too, and most of the councillors. And I don't know, for I take no side. Perhaps the gentleman you want is one of these?" "Very likely," I said. "So M. Froment is here?" "Monsieur knows him?" "Yes," I said drily, "a little." "Well, he is here, or he is not," the landlord answered, shaking his head. "It is impossible to say." "Why?" I asked. "Does he not live here?" "Yes, he lives here; at the Port d'Auguste on the old wall near the Capuchins. But----" he looked round and then continued mysteriously, "he goes out, where he has never gone in, Monsieur! And he has a house in the Amphitheatre, and it is the same there. And some say that the Capuchins is only another house of his. And if you go to the Cabaret de la Vierge, and give his name--you pay nothing." He said this with many nods, and then seemed on a sudden to think that he had said too much, and hurried away. Asking for them, I learned that M. de Géol and Buton, failing to get a room there, had gone to the Ecu de France; but I was not very sorry to be rid of them for the time, and accepting the host's offer, I went to the eating-room, and there made myself as comfortable as two hard chairs and the excitement of my thoughts permitted. The one thing, the one subject that absorbed me was Louis' behaviour, and the strange and abrupt change I had marked in it. He had been glad to see me, his hand had leaped to meet mine, I had read the old affection in his eyes; and then--then on a sudden, in a moment he had frozen into surly, churlish antagonism, an antagonism that had taken Madame Catinot by surprise, and was not without a touch of remorse, almost of horror. It could not be that she was dead? It could not be that Denise--no, my mind failed to entertain it. But I rose, trembling at the thought, and paced the room until daylight; listening to the watchman's cry, and the mournful hours, and the occasional rush of hurrying feet, that spoke of the perturbed city. What to me were Froment, or the red or the white or the tricolour, veto or no veto, endowment or disendowment, in comparison to that?