Little by little the crowd melted away, and Jean heard a dozen different versions of the incident as it travelled with ever-increasing exaggeration from mouth to mouth.  The last comers learned the startling news that they had just arrested a German general officer, who had sneaked into Paris as a spy to betray the city to the enemy with the connivance of the Bonapartists.

The streets being once more passable, Jean saw Monsieur Bargemont come out of the Mairie.  He was very red and a sleeve of his overcoat was torn away.

Jean made up his mind to follow him.

Along the boulevards he kept him in view at a distance, and not much caring whether he lost track of him or no; but when the Functionary turned up a cross street, the young man closed in on his quarry.  He had no particular suspicion even now; a mere instinct urged him to dog the man’s heels.  Monsieur Bargemont wheeled to the right, into a fairly broad street, empty and badly lighted by petroleum flares that supplied the place of the gas lamps.  It was the one street Jean knew better than another.  He had been there so often and often!  The shape of the doors, the colour of the shop-fronts, the lettering on the sign-boards, everything about it was familiar; not a thing in it, down to the night-bell at the chemist’s and druggist’s, but called up memories, associations, to touch him.  The footsteps of the two men echoed in the silence.  Monsieur Bargemont looked round, advanced a few paces more and rang at a door.  Jean Servien had now come up with him and stood beside him under the archway.  It was the same door he had kissed one night of desperation, Gabrielle’s door.  It opened; Jean took a step forward and Monsieur Bargemont, going in first, left it open, thinking the National Guard there was a tenant going home to his lodging.  Jean slipped in and climbed two flights of the dark staircase.  Monsieur Bargemont ascended to the third floor and rang at a door on the landing, which was opened.  Jean could hear Gabrielle’s voice saying: 

“How late you are coming home, dear; I have sent Rosalie to bed; I was waiting up for you, you see.”

The man replied, still puffing and panting with his exertions: 

“Just fancy, they wanted to pitch me into the river, those scoundrels!  But never you mind, I’ve brought you something mighty rare and precious—­a pot of butter.”

“Like Little Red Ridinghood,” laughed Gabrielle’s voice.  “Come in and you shall tell me all about it....  Hark! do you hear?”

“What, the guns?  Oh! that never stops.”

“No, the noise of a fall on the stairs.”

“You’re dreaming!”

“Give me the candle, I’m going to look.”

Monsieur Bargemont went down two or three steps and saw Jean stretched motionless on the landing.

“A drunkard,” he said; “there’s so many of them!  They were drunkards, those chaps who wanted to drown me.”