"Outrage! Unwarrantable outrage! This is worse than the Bourbon tyranny!" muttered Bonaparte, as the two separated, for it lacked but half an hour of the required time. "But go cautiously, Jean, when the inspectors visit your house! Remember, you've something incriminating there!" When the following morning dawned, Paris was a singular sight! Streets that had been populous with passing throngs and carriages, or swarming with the crowded masses of the poor, were silent and deserted. Everyone sought the vain protection of his own roof, which was soon to prove no protection at all, and waited in fearful expectation for the threatened visit. No one, were he never so innocent, could be certain of immunity. Valuable property was hurriedly concealed, and persons who had the slightest reason to think themselves objects of suspicion were carefully hidden, some even going so far as to have themselves nailed up within the walls of their houses! For two days Mère Clouet, Yvonne and Jean remained within doors in nerve-racking uncertainty, trembling at the slightest sound, or the faintest cry in the streets. For they had in their midst, as Bonaparte had said, "something most incriminating,"--the pretty, coal-black spaniel of Louis Charles, so lately imprisoned and deprived of his title. "What shall we do with Moufflet, when the committee of surveillance comes?" whispered Yvonne, who with all the others, instinctively lowered her voice in this time of peril, lest the very walls betray her. "Leave that to me!" commanded Jean. "I've decided what I shall do and say, only be sure you do not contradict me, either by word or action!" "I wish we could have hidden the little animal," sighed Mère Clouet, "but of course it would have been useless to try. He would surely betray both himself and us by some bark or whine!" So the hours wore away. The two days of suspense drew to an end, and the Clouet family were beginning to hope they had escaped the ordeal, when at dusk that night, a thundering knock was heard at the door. "Open, or we break in!" growled a voice, and Jean hastened to comply. "Coming, coming!" he called cheerfully. "You are welcome, citizens all!" "That's a gayer greeting than we get at most places!" answered a high nasal voice as the door was opened. And without further ceremony there tramped in six huge pikemen, headed by one of the committee of surveillance,--the owner of the nasal voice. He was a singularly unprepossessing specimen of humanity, thin, wiry, short of stature, evil-faced, with little, claw-like hands. He had a curious habit of slinking about with soft, noiseless steps and a watchful look in his beady eyes that reminded one irresistibly of a mouse. The pikemen addressed him as Citizen Coudert.