Six weeks before, Bouvet de Lozier had taken, through Mme. Costard de Saint-Leger, his mistress, an isolated house at Chaillot near the Seine.  He had put there as concierge, a man named Daniel and his wife, both of whom he knew to be devoted to him.  A porch with fourteen steps led to the front hall of the house.  This served as dining-room.  It was lighted by four windows and paved with squares of black and white marble; a walnut table with eight covers, cane-seated chairs, the door-panels representing the games of children, and striped India muslin curtains completed the decoration of this room.  The next room had also four windows, and contained an ottoman and six chairs covered with blue and white Utrecht velvet, two armchairs of brocaded silk, and two mahogany tables with marble tops.  Then came the bedroom with a four-post bed, consoles and mirrors.  On the first floor was an apartment of three rooms, and in an adjoining building, a large hall which could be used as an assembly-room.  The whole was surrounded by a large garden, closed on the side towards the river-bank by strong double gates.

If we have lingered over this description, it is because it seems to say so much.  Who would have imagined that this elegant little house had been rented by Georges to shelter himself and his companions?  These men, whose disinterestedness and tenacity we cannot but admire, who for ten years had fought with heroic fortitude for the royal cause, enduring the hardest privations, braving tempests, sleeping on straw and marching at night; these men whose bodies were hardened by exposure and fatigue, retained a purity of mind and sincerity really touching.  They never ceased to believe that “the Prince” for whom they fought would one day come and share their danger.  It had been so often announced and so often put off that a little mistrust might have been forgiven them, but they had faith, and that inspired them with a thought which seemed quite simple to them but which was really sublime.  While they were lodging in holes, living on a pittance parsimoniously taken from the party’s funds, they kept a comfortable and secure retreat ready, where “their prince”—­who was never to come—­could wait at his ease, until at the price of their lives, they had assured the success of his cause.  If the history of our bloody feuds has always an epic quality, it is because it abounds in examples of blind devotion, so impossible nowadays that they seem to us improbable exaggerations.

After six days at the “Cloche d’Or,” Georges took possession of the house at Chaillot, but he did not stay there long, for about the 25th of September he was at 21 Rue Careme-Prenant in the Faubourg du Temple.  Hozier had rented an entresol there, and had employed a man called Spain, who had an aptitude for this sort of work, to make a secret place in it.  Spain, under pretence of indispensable repairs, had shut himself up with his tools in the apartment, and had made a cleverly-concealed trap-door,