Mme. la Marquise made no resistance.  As I told you, she had been, since dusk, like a person in a dream; so what could I do but follow her noble example?  Indeed, I was too dazed to do otherwise.

We all went stumbling down the dark, rickety staircase, Laporte leading the way with Mme. la Marquise, who had M. le Vicomte tightly clasped in her arms.  I followed with the sergeant, whose hand was on my shoulder; I believe that two soldiers walked behind, but of that I cannot be sure.

At the bottom of the stairs through the open door of the house I caught sight of the vague outline of a large barouche, the lanthorns of which threw a feeble light upon the cruppers of two horses and of a couple of men sitting on the box.

Mme. la Marquise stepped quietly into the carriage.  Laporte followed her, and I was bundled in in his wake by the rough hands of the soldiery.  Just before the order was given to start, Laporte put his head out of the window and shouted to the sergeant: 

“When you see Caudy tell him to report himself to me at once.  I will be back here in half an hour; keep strict guard as before until then, citizen sergeant.”

The next moment the coachman cracked his whip, Laporte called loudly, “En avant!” and the heavy barouche went rattling along the ill-paved streets.

Inside the carriage all was silence.  I could hear Mme. la Marquise softly whispering to M. le Vicomte, and I marvelled how wondrously calm—­ nay, cheerful, she could be.  Then suddenly I heard a sound which of a truth did make my heart stop its beating.  It was a quaint and prolonged laugh which I once thought I would never hear again on this earth.  It came from the corner of the barouche next to where Mme. la Marquise was so tenderly and gaily crooning to her child.  And a kindly voice said merrily: 

“In half an hour we shall be outside Lyons.  To-morrow we’ll be across the Swiss frontier.  We’ve cheated that old tiger after all.  What say you, Mme. la Marquise?”

It was milor’s voice, and he was as merry as a school-boy.

“I told you, old Jean-Pierre,” he added, as he placed that firm hand which I loved so well upon my knee, “I told you that those confounded murderers would not get me this time.”

And to think that I did not know him, as he stood less than a quarter of an hour ago upon the threshold of our attic in the hideous guise of that abominable Laporte.  He had spent two days in collecting old clothes that resembled those of that infamous wretch, and in taking possession of one of the derelict rooms in the house in the Rue des Pipots.  Then while we were expecting every moment that Laporte would order our arrest, milor assumed the personality of the monster, hoodwinked the sergeant on the dark staircase, and by that wonderfully audacious coup saved Mme. la Marquise, M. le Vicomte and my humble self from the guillotine.