At length he saw a lighted lamp with the inscription “Hotel de la Monnaie.”

He walked in.

The landlord came up, and looked at him somewhat askance.

He then thought of looking at himself.

His unshaven beard, his disordered hair, his cap soiled with mud, his blood-stained hands, his clothes in rags, he looked horrible.

He took a double louis out of his waistband, and put it on the table of the parlor, which he had entered and said to the landlord,—­

“In truth, sir, I am not a thief, I am a proscript; money is now my only passport.  I have just come from Paris, I wish to eat first and sleep afterwards.”

The landlord was touched, took the double louis, and gave him bed and supper.

Next day, while he was still sleeping, the landlord came into his room, woke him gently, and said to him,—­

“Now, sir, if I were you, I should go and see Baron Hody.”

“Who and what is Baron Hody?” asked Cournet, half asleep.

The landlord explained to him who Baron Hody was.  When I had occasion to ask the same question as Cournet, I received from three inhabitants of Brussels the three answers as follows:—­

“He is a dog.”

“He is a polecat.”

“He is a hyena.”

There is probably some exaggeration in these three answers.

A fourth Belgian whom I need not specify confined himself to saying to me,—­

“He is a beast.”

As to his public functions, Baron Hody was what they call at Brussels “The Administrator of Public Safety;” that is to say, a counterfeit of the Prefect of Police, half Carlier, half Maupas.

Thanks to Baron Hody, who has since left the place, and who, moreover, like M. de Montalembert, was a “mere Jesuit,” the Belgian police at that moment was a compound of the Russian and Austrian police.  I have read strange confidential letters of this Baron Hody.  In action and in style there is nothing more cynical and more repulsive than the Jesuit police, when they unveil their secret treasures.  These are the contents of the unbuttoned cassock.

At the time of which we are speaking (December, 1851), the Clerical party had joined itself to all the forms of Monarchy; and this Baron Hody confused Orleanism with Legitimate right.  I simply tell the tale.  Nothing more.

“Baron Hody.  Very well, I will go to him,” said Cournet.

He got up, dressed himself, brushed his clothes as well as he could, and asked the landlord, “Where is the Police office?”

“At the Ministry of Justice.”

In fact this is the case in Brussels; the police administration forms part of the Ministry of Justice, an arrangement which does not greatly raise the police and somewhat lowers justice.

Cournet went there, and was shown into the presence of this personage.

Baron Hody did him the honor to ask him sharply,—­