“Are you hurt, Felix?” cried M. Etienne, the first to disentangle himself.

“No,” I said, groaning; “but I banged my head.  She did not say it was a trap-door.”

We ascended the stairs a second time—­this time most cautiously on our hands and knees.  Above us, at the end, we could feel, with upleaping of spirit, a wooden ceiling.

“Ah, I have the cord!” he exclaimed.

The next instant we heard a faint but most comforting tinkle somewhere above us.  Before we had time to wonder whether any marked it but us, we heard steps overhead, and a noise as of a chest being pulled about, and then the trap lifted.  We climbed out into a silk-mercer’s shop.

“Faith, my man,” said M. Etienne to the little bourgeois who had opened to us, “I am glad to see you appear so promptly.”

He looked at us, somewhat troubled or alarmed.

“You must have met—­” he suggested with hesitancy.

“Yes,” said M. Etienne; “but he did not object.  We are, of course, of the initiated.”

“Of course, of course,” the little fellow assented, with a funny assumption of knowing all about it.  “Not every one has the secret of the passage.  Well, I can call myself a lucky man.  ’Tis mighty few mercers have a duke in their shop as often as I.”

We looked curiously about us.  The shop was low and dim, with piles of stuff in rolls on the shelves, and other stuffs lying loose on the counter before us, as if the man had just been measuring them—­gorgeous brocades and satins.  Above us, a bell on the rafter still quivered.

“Yes, that is the bell of the trap,” the proprietor said, following our glance.  “Customers do not know where it rings from.  And if I am not at liberty to open, I drop my brass yardstick on the floor—­But they told you that, doubtless, monsieur?” he added, regarding M. Etienne again a little uneasily.

“They told me something else I had near forgotten,” M. Etienne answered, and, drawing a crown in the air, gave the password, “For the Cause.”

“For the King,” the shopkeeper made instant rejoinder, drawing in the air in his turn a letter C and the numeral X.

M. Etienne laid a gold piece on the counter, and if the shopkeeper had felt any doubts of this well-dressed gallant who wore no hat, they vanished in its radiance.

“And now, my friend, let us out into the street and forget our faces.”

The man took up his candle to light us to the door.

“Perhaps it would not trouble monsieur to say a word for me over there?” he suggested, pointing in the direction of the tunnel.  “M. le Duc has every confidence in me.  Still, it would do no harm if monsieur should mention how quickly I let him out.”

“When I see him, I will surely mention it,” M. Etienne promised him.  “Continue to be vigilant to-night, my friend.  There is another man to come.”

Followed by the little bourgeois’s thanks and adieus, we walked out into the sweet open air.  As soon as his door was shut again, we took to our heels, nor stopped running till we had put half a dozen streets between us and the mouth of the tunnel.  Then we walked along in breathless silence.