“Let us go to the Hofburg,” said Marco.  “They will come back there, and we shall see him again even if we can’t get near.”

To the Hofburg they made their way through the less crowded streets, and there they waited as near to the great palace as they could get.  They were there when, the ceremonies at an end, the imperial carriages returned, but, though they saw their man again, they were at some distance from him and he did not see them.

Then followed four singular days.  They were singular days because they were full of tantalizing incidents.  Nothing seemed easier than to hear talk of, and see the Emperor’s favorite, but nothing was more impossible than to get near to him.  He seemed rather a favorite with the populace, and the common people of the shopkeeping or laboring classes were given to talking freely of him—­of where he was going and what he was doing.  To-night he would be sure to be at this great house or that, at this ball or that banquet.  There was no difficulty in discovering that he would be sure to go to the opera, or the theatre, or to drive to Schoenbrunn with his imperial master.  Marco and The Rat heard casual speech of him again and again, and from one part of the city to the other they followed and waited for him.  But it was like chasing a will-o’-the-wisp.  He was evidently too brilliant and important a person to be allowed to move about alone.  There were always people with him who seemed absorbed in his languid cynical talk.  Marco thought that he never seemed to care much for his companions, though they on their part always seemed highly entertained by what he was saying.  It was noticeable that they laughed a great deal, though he himself scarcely even smiled.

“He’s one of those chaps with the trick of saying witty things as if he didn’t see the fun in them himself,” The Rat summed him up.  “Chaps like that are always cleverer than the other kind.”

“He’s too high in favor and too rich not to be followed about,” they heard a man in a shop say one day, “but he gets tired of it.  Sometimes, when he’s too bored to stand it any longer, he gives it out that he’s gone into the mountains somewhere, and all the time he’s shut up alone with his pictures in his own palace.”

That very night The Rat came in to their attic looking pale and disappointed.  He had been out to buy some food after a long and arduous day in which they had covered much ground, had seen their man three times, and each time under circumstances which made him more inaccessible than ever.  They had come back to their poor quarters both tired and ravenously hungry.

The Rat threw his purchase on to the table and himself into a chair.

“He’s gone to Budapest,” he said. “Now how shall we find him?”

Marco was rather pale also, and for a moment he looked paler.  The day had been a hard one, and in their haste to reach places at a long distance from each other they had forgotten their need of food.