Charamaule undertook to send to the Rue des Moulins to tell the other members of the committee that we would wait for them at No. 82, Rue Popincourt.

We walked, as in the morning, in little separate groups.  The Quai Jemmapes skirts the left bank of the St. Martin Canal; we went up it.  We only met a few solitary workmen, who looked back when we had passed, and stopped behind us with an air of astonishment.  The night was dark.  A few drops of rain were falling.

A little beyond the Rue de Chemin Vert we turned to the right and reached the Rue Popincourt.  There all was deserted, extinguished, closed, and silent, as in the Faubourg St. Antoine.  This street is of great length.  We walked for a long time; we passed by the barracks.  Cournet was no longer with us; he had remained behind to inform some of his friends, and we were told to take defensive measures in case his house was attacked.  We looked for No. 82.  The darkness was such that we could not distinguish the numbers on the houses.  At length, at the end of the street, on the right, we saw a light; it was a grocer’s shop, the only one open throughout the street.  One of us entered, and asked the grocer, who was sitting behind his counter, to show us M. Cournet’s house.  “Opposite,” said the grocer, pointing to an old and low carriage entrance which could be seen on the other side of the street, almost facing his shop.

We knocked at this door.  It was opened.  Baudin entered first, tapped at the window of the porter’s lodge, and asked “Monsieur Cournet?”—­An old woman’s voice answered, “Here.”

The portress was in bed; all in the house sleeping.  We went in.

Having entered, and the gate being shut behind us, we found ourselves in a little square courtyard which formed the centre of a sort of a two-storied ruin; the silence of a convent prevailed, not a light was to be seen at the windows; near a shed was seen a low entrance to a narrow, dark, and winding staircase.  “We have made some mistake,” said Charamaule; “it is impossible that it can be here.”

Meanwhile the portress, hearing all these trampling steps beneath her doorway, had become wide awake, had lighted her lamp, and we could see her in her lodge, her face pressed against the window, gazing with alarm at sixty dark phantoms, motionless, and standing in her courtyard.

Esquiros addressed her:  “Is this really M. Cournet’s house?” said he.

“M.  Cornet, without doubt,” answered the good woman.

All was explained.  We had asked for Cournet, the grocer had understood Cornet, the portress had understood Cornet.  It chanced that M. Cornet lived there.

We shall see by and by what an extraordinary service chance had rendered us.

We went out, to the great relief of the poor portress, and we resumed our search.  Xavier Durrieu succeeded in ascertaining our whereabouts, and extricated us from our difficulty.