I spent the whole of the day begging in the streets and dodging the guard, and even so I only collected four sous.  I could have got more perhaps, only that at about midday the smell of food from an eating-house turned me sick and faint, and when I regained consciousness I found myself huddled up under a doorway and evening gathering in fast around me.  If Mme. la Marquise could go two days without food I ought to go four.  I struggled to my feet; fortunately I had retained possession of my four sous, else of a truth I would not have had the courage to go back to the miserable attic which was the only home I knew.

I was wending my way along as fast as I could—­for I knew that Mme. la Marquise would be getting terribly anxious—­when, just as I turned into the Rue Blanche, I spied two gentlemen—­obviously strangers, for they were dressed with a luxury and care with which we had long ceased to be familiar in Lyons—­walking rapidly towards me.  A moment or two later they came to a halt, not far from where I was standing, and I heard the taller one of the two say to the other in English—­a language with which I am vaguely conversant:  “All right again this time, what, Tony?”

Both laughed merrily like a couple of schoolboys playing truant, and then they disappeared under the doorway of a dilapidated house, whilst I was left wondering how two such elegant gentlemen dared be abroad in Lyons these days, seeing that every man, woman and child who was dressed in anything but threadbare clothes was sure to be insulted in the streets for an aristocrat, and as often as not summarily arrested as a traitor.

However, I had other things to think about, and had already dismissed the little incident from my mind, when at the bottom of the Rue Blanche I came upon a knot of gaffers, men and women, who were talking and gesticulating very excitedly outside the door of a cook-shop.  At first I did not take much notice of what was said:  my eyes were glued to the front of the shop, on which were displayed sundry delicacies of the kind which makes a wretched, starved beggar’s mouth water as he goes by; a roast capon especially attracted my attention, together with a bottle of red wine; these looked just the sort of luscious food which Mme. la Marquise would relish.

Well, sir, the law of God says:  “Thou shalt not covet!” and no doubt that I committed a grievous sin when my hungry eyes fastened upon that roast capon and that bottle of Burgundy.  We also know the stories of Judas Iscariot and of Jacob’s children who sold their own brother Joseph into slavery—­such a crime, monsieur, I took upon my conscience then; for just as the vision of Mme. la Marquise eating that roast capon and drinking that Burgundy rose before my eyes, my ears caught some fragments of the excited conversation which was going on all around me.

“He went this way!” someone said.

“No; that!” protested another.