While the countess hid the horses and tied and gagged them, Michu removed the stones and opened the entrance to the caverns.  The countess, who thought she knew the forest by heart, was amazed when she descended into the vaulted chambers.  Michu replaced the stones above them with the dexterity of a mason.  As he finished, the sound of horses’ feet and the voices of the gendarmes echoed in the darkness; but he quietly struck a match, lighted a resinous bit of wood and led the countess to the in pace, where there was still a piece of the candle with which he had first explored the caves.  An iron door of some thickness, eaten in several places by rust, had been put in good order by the bailiff, and could be fastened securely by bars slipping into holes in the wall on either side of it.  The countess, half dead with fatigue, sat down on a stone bench, above which there still remained an iron ring, the staple of which was embedded in the masonry.

“We have a salon to converse in,” said Michu.  “The gendarmes may prowl as much as they like; the worst they could do would be to take our horses.”

“If they do that,” said Laurence, “it would be the death of my cousins and the Messieurs d’Hauteserre.  Tell me now, what do you know?”

Michu related what he had overheard Malin say to Grevin.

“They are already on the road to Paris; they were to enter it to-morrow morning,” said the countess when he had finished.

“Lost!” exclaimed Michu.  “All persons entering or leaving the barriers are examined.  Malin has strong reasons to let my masters compromise themselves; he is seeking to get them killed out of his way.”

“And I, who don’t know anything of the general plan of the affair,” cried Laurence, “how can I warn Georges, Riviere, and Moreau?  Where are they?—­However, let us think only of my cousins and the d’Hauteserres; you must catch up with them, no matter what it costs.”

“The telegraph goes faster than the best horse,” said Michu; “and of all the nobles concerned in this conspiracy your cousins are the closest watched.  If I can find them, they must be hidden here and kept here till the affair is over.  Their poor father may have had a foreboding when he set me to search for this hiding-place; perhaps he felt that his sons would be saved here.”

“My mare is from the stables of the Comte d’Artois,—­she is the daughter of his finest English horse,” said Laurence; “but she has already gone sixty miles, she would drop dead before you reached them.”

“Mine is in good condition,” replied Michu; “and if you did sixty miles I shall have only thirty to do.”

“Nearer forty,” she said, “they have been walking since dark.  You will overtake them beyond Lagny, at Coupvrai, where they expected to be at daybreak.  They are disguised as sailors, and will enter Paris by the river on some vessel.  This,” she added, taking half of her mother’s wedding-ring from her finger, “is the only thing which will make them trust you; they have the other half.  The keeper of Couvrai is the father of one of their soldiers; he has hidden them tonight in a hut in the forest deserted by charcoal-burners.  They are eight in all, Messieurs d’Hauteserre and four others are with my cousins.”