“Who are you?”

“A refugee,” answered Cournet; “I am one of those whom the coup d’etat has driven from Paris.

“Your profession?”

“Ex-naval officer.”

“Ex-naval officer!” exclaimed Baron Hody in a much gentler tone, “did you know His Royal Highness the Prince de Joinville?”

“I have served under him.”

It was the truth.  Cournet had served under M. de Joinville, and prided himself on it.

At this statement the administrator of Belgian safety completely unbent, and said to Cournet, with the most gracious smile that the police can find, “That’s all right, sir; stay here as long as you please; we close Belgium to the Men of the Mountain, but we throw it widely open to men like you.”

When Cournet told me this answer of Hody’s, I thought that my fourth Belgian was right.

A certain comic gloom was mingled at times with these tragedies.  Barthelemy Terrier was a Representative of the people, and a proscript.  They gave him a special passport for a compulsory route as far as Belgium for himself and his wife.  Furnished with this passport he left with a woman.  This woman was a man.  Preveraud, a landed proprietor at Donjon, one of the most prominent men in the Department of Allier, was Terrier’s brother-in-law.  When the coup d’etat broke out at Donjon, Preveraud had taken up arms and fulfilled his duty, had combated the outrage and defended the law.  For this he had been condemned to death.  The justice of that time, as we know.  Justice executed justice.  For this crime of being an honest man they had guillotined Charlet, guillotined Cuisinier, guillotined Cirasse.  The guillotine was an instrument of the reign.  Assassination by the guillotine was one of the means of order of that time.  It was necessary to save Preveraud.  He was little and slim:  they dressed him as a woman.  He was not sufficiently pretty for them not to cover his face with a thick veil.  They put the brave and sturdy hands of the combatant in a muff.  Thus veiled and a little filled out with padding, Preveraud made a charming woman.  He became Madame Terrier, and his brother-in-law took him away.  They crossed Paris peaceably, and without any other adventure than an imprudence committed by Preveraud, who, seeing that the shaft-horse of a wagon had fallen down, threw aside his muff, lifted his veil and his petticoat, and if Terrier, in dire alarm, had not stopped him, he would have helped the carter to raise his horse.  Had a sergent de ville been there, Preveraud would have been captured.  Terrier hastened to thrust Preveraud into a carriage, and at nightfall they left for Brussels.  They were alone in the carriage, each in a corner and face to face.  All went well as far as Amiens.  At Amiens station the door was opened, and a gendarme entered and seated himself by the side of Preveraud.  The gendarme asked for his passport, Terrier showed it him; the little woman in her corner, veiled and silent, did not stir, and the gendarme found all in due form.  He contented himself with saying, “We shall travel together, I am on duty as far as the frontier.”