In one corner of the great, square room there sat an ancient bourgeois with his cronies sipping a flask of Arbois; in another a young man in the uniform of the Régiment de Perche was discussing a savoury ragout with a demoiselle who was masked; close by the open door, with the tables drawn out in front of it, though not too near to it to prevent free ingress and egress, were two men who, in an earlier period than that of Le Dieudonné, might have been termed _marauds_, swashbucklers, _bretteurs_, or heaven knows what. Now--even in the days which seemed to those who lived in them to be degenerate ones with all the flame and excitement of life departed, and which seem to those who have lived after them to have been so full of a strong, masterfully pulsating, full-blooded existence, perfumed with all that goes to make life one long romance--these men might have appeared to be anything except sober citizens or honest bourgeois carrying on steady, reputable callings. For, on their faces, in their garb, even in their wicked-looking side-weapons which now hung peacefully on the wall close by where they sat, there was an indescribable something which proclaimed that they were not men bringing up families decently and honestly. Not men content with small gains obtained by honest labour, by taking down their shutters at dawn and putting them up again long after nightfall; not men who walked side by side with their wives to Saint Eustache or Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois on Sabbath mornings while leading their children by the hand. Men, indeed, to judge by their appearance, their words and exclamations--which would not have graced the salons of St. Germain or Versailles!--and also by their looks and gestures, more fitted, more suitable to, and better acquainted with a huge fortress-prison close at hand, termed the Bastille, than any place of worship. "He should be here by now," the elder of the two said to his companion, whom he addressed frequently as Fleur de Mai. "The sun has set and, ere long, every bell in Paris will be proclaiming that it is nine o'clock. If he comes not soon, there will be little time for us to go to the Hôtel des Muses and have a cast for a pistole or two. Van den Enden closes his _tripot_ early." "He will come, Boisfleury. So will the other. His master and, now, ours. Yet, remember what I have already told you, treat neither of them too much _en maître_. Remember also, that we are all officers and gentlemen--or have been." "Yet--_malheur à tous!_ we are no longer officers and, well! they are." "La Truaumont is not. The other, the Chief, is, seeing that he is actual first in command of all the guards of the Splendid One." "If he were not he would not be coming here to-night. That command gives him the power he desires." "Yes, combined with the other power, the other assistance, he expects." "Will he succeed, Fleur de Mai?"