“My Good Paul (said the epistle, that I have kept till now as a memorial of my adventure): When you return you will discover from this that I have taken leave _a l'anglaise_, and I fancy I can see my secretary looking like the arms of Bourges (though that is an unkind imputation). 'Tis fated, seemingly, that there shall be no rest for the sole of the foot of poor Father Hamilton. I had no sooner got to like a loose collar, and an unbuttoned vest, and the seclusion of a cell, than I must be plucked out; and now when my birds--the darlings!--are on the very point of hatching I must make adieux. _Oh! la belle équipée!_ M. Buhot knows where I am--that's certain, so I must remove myself, and this time I do not propose to burden M. Paul Greig with my company, for it will be a miracle if they fail to find me. As for my dear Croque-mort, he can have the glass coach and Jacques and Bernard, and doubtless the best he can do with them is to take all to Dunkerque and leave them there. I myself, I go _sans trompette_, and no inquiries will discover to him where I go.” As a postscript he added, “And 'twas only a sailor's log, dear lad! My poor young Paul!” When I read the letter I was puzzled tremendously, and at first I felt inclined to blame the priest for a scurvy flitting to rid himself of my society, but a little deliberation convinced me that no such ignoble consideration was at the bottom of his flight. If I read his epistle aright the step he took was in my own interest, though how it could be so there was no surmising. In any case he was gone; his friend in the hospital told me he had set out behind myself, and taken a candle with him and given a farewell visit to his birds, and almost cried about them and about myself, and then departed for good to conceal himself, in some other part of the city, probably, but exactly where his friend had no way of guessing. And it was a further evidence of the priest's good feeling to myself (if such were needed) that he had left a sum of a hundred livres for me towards the costs of my future movements.