“It is plain to me, monsieur,” the officer interrupted, “that the description fits you in every particular.”  And so it did.

I, who had heard M. Etienne described twenty times, had yesterday mistaken Lucas for him; the same items served for both.  It was the more remarkable because they actually looked no more alike than chalk and cheese.  Lucas had set down his catalogue without a thought that he was drawing his own picture.  If ever hunter was caught in his own gin, Lucas was!

“You lie!” he cried furiously.  “You know I am not Mar.  You lie, the whole pack of you!”

“Gag him, Ravelle,” the captain commanded with an angry flush.

“I demand to be taken before M. de Belin!” Lucas shouted.

The next moment the soldier had twisted a handkerchief about his mouth.

“Ready?” the captain asked of Gaspard, who had come back just in time to aid in the throttling.  “Move on, then.”

He led the way out, the two dragoons following with their prisoner.  And this time Lucas’s fertile wits failed him.  He did not slip from his captors’ fingers between the room and the street.  He was deposited in the big black coach that had aroused my wonder.  Louis cracked his whip and off they rumbled.

I laughed all the way back to the Hotel St. Quentin.

XIX

To the Hotel de Lorraine.

I found M. Etienne sitting on the steps before the house.  He had doffed his rusty black for a suit of azure and silver; his sword and poniard were heavy with silver chasings.  His blue hat, its white plume pinned in a silver buckle, lay on the stone beside him.  He had discarded his sling and was engaged in tuning a lute.

Evidently he was struck by some change in my appearance; for he asked at once: 

“What has happened, Felix?”

“Such a lark!” I cried.

“What! did old Menard share the crowns with you for your trouble?”

“No; he pocketed them all.  That was not it.”

I was so choked with laughter as to make it hard work to explain what was it, while his first bewilderment changed to an amazed interest, which in its turn gave way, not to delight, but to distress.

“Mordieu!” he cried, starting up, his face ablaze, “if I resemble that dirt—­”

“As chalk and cheese,” I said.  “No one seeing you both could possibly mistake you for two of the same race.  But there was nothing in his catalogue that did not fit him.  It mentioned, to be sure, the right arm in a sling; his was not, but he had his wrist bandaged.  I think he cut himself last night when he was after me and I flung the door in his face, for afterward he held his hand behind his back.  At any rate, there was the bandage; that was enough to satisfy the captain.”

“And they took him off?”

“Truly.  They gagged him because he protested so much, and lugged him off.”