“I could have eaten him raw.  But why should I?  He is, perhaps, a father of a family—­the support of a widowed mother:  if I had destroyed him they might have come to want.  No; let him go.”

“All the same, he does not seem inclined to go.  There he is, still lurking about the front of the shop.”

“Truly?  Where?” asked Anatole, in evident perturbation.  “Bah! we will tire him of that.  By the time we have finished a second bottle—­”

“Or a third, if you will!” cried Hyde, cheerfully.

They had their breakfast—­the most savoury dishes; ham and sour crout, tripe after the mode of Caen, rich ripe Roquefort cheese, and had disposed of three bottles of a rather rough but potent red wine, before Anatole would speak on any but the most common-place topics.  The Crimea, the dreadful winter, the punishment administered to their common enemy, occupied him exclusively.

But with the fourth bottle he became more communicative.

“You owe a long candle to your saint for your luck to-day in meeting me,” he said, with a slight hiccup.

“Ah! how so?”

“Had not I been there to give you protection you would now be under lock and key in the depot of the Prefecture.”

Hyde, in spite of himself, shuddered as he thought of his last detention in that unsavoury prison.

“What, then, have you done, my English friend?” went on Anatole, with drunken solemnity.  “Why should the police seek your arrest?”

“But do they?  I cannot believe it.”

“It is as I tell you.  I myself am in the ‘cuisine’ (the Prefecture).  Since my return from the war my illustrious services have been rewarded by an appointment of great trust.”

“In other words, you are now a police-agent, and you were set to watch for some one like me.”

“Why not you?” asked Anatole, trying, but in vain, to fix him with his watery eyes.  “In any case,” he went on, “I wish to serve a comrade—­at risk to myself, perhaps.”

“You shall not suffer for it, never fear, in the long run.  Count always upon me.”

“They may say that I have betrayed my trust; that I put friendship before duty.  That has always been my error; I have too soft a heart.”

Anatole now began to cry with emotion at his own chivalrous self-sacrifice, which changed quickly into bravado as he cried, striking the table noisily—­

“Who cares?  I would save you from the Prefect himself.”

At this moment the big man who had been watching at the window returned, accompanied by two others.  He walked straight towards the door of the wine-shop.

“Sacre bleu! le patron (chief).  You are lost!  Quick! take me by the throat.”

Hyde jumped to his feet and promptly obeyed the curious command.

“Now struggle; throw me to the ground, bolt through the back door,” whispered Anatole, hastily.

All which Hyde executed promptly and punctiliously.  Anatole suffered him to do as he pleased, and Hyde escaped through the back entrance just as the other policemen rushed in at the front.