“But they do not know me yet,” said he to himself.  “This crew is capable of anything; I must find out if they are killing Peyrade; for if so, I must not be seen any more——­”

The viler a man’s life is, the more he clings to it; it becomes at every moment a protest and a revenge.

Corentin went back to the cab, and drove to his rooms to assume the disguise of a feeble old man, in a scanty greenish overcoat and a tow wig.  Then he returned on foot, prompted by his friendship for Peyrade.  He intended to give instructions to his most devoted and cleverest underlings.

As he went along the Rue Saint-Honore to reach the Rue Saint-Roch from the Place Vendome, he came up behind a girl in slippers, and dressed as a woman dresses for the night.  She had on a white bed-jacket and a nightcap, and from time to time gave vent to a sob and an involuntary groan.  Corentin out-paced her, and turning round, recognized Lydie.

“I am a friend of your father’s, of Monsieur Canquoelle’s,” said he in his natural voice.

“Ah! then here is some one I can trust!” said she.

“Do not seem to have recognized me,” Corentin went on, “for we are pursued by relentless foes, and are obliged to disguise ourselves.  But tell me what has befallen you?”

“Oh, monsieur,” said the poor child, “the facts but not the story can be told—­I am ruined, lost, and I do not know how——­”

“Where have you come from?”

“I don’t know, monsieur.  I fled with such precipitancy, I have come through so many streets, round so many turnings, fancying I was being followed.  And when I met any one that seemed decent, I asked my way to get back to the Boulevards, so as to find the Rue de la Paix.  And at last, after walking——­What o’clock is it, monsieur?”

“Half-past eleven,” said Corentin.

“I escaped at nightfall,” said Lydie.  “I have been walking for five hours.”

“Well, come along; you can rest now; you will find your good Katt.”

“Oh, monsieur, there is no rest for me!  I only want to rest in the grave, and I will go and wait for death in a convent if I am worthy to be admitted——­”

“Poor little girl!—­But you struggled?”

“Oh yes!  Oh! if you could only imagine the abject creatures they placed me with——!”

“They sent you to sleep, no doubt?”

“Ah! that is it” cried poor Lydie.  “A little more strength and I should be at home.  I feel that I am dropping, and my brain is not quite clear.—­Just now I fancied I was in a garden——­”

Corentin took Lydie in his arms, and she lost consciousness; he carried her upstairs.

“Katt!” he called.

Katt came out with exclamations of joy.

“Don’t be in too great a hurry to be glad!” said Corentin gravely; “the girl is very ill.”

When Lydie was laid on her bed and recognized her own room by the light of two candles that Katt lighted, she became delirious.  She sang scraps of pretty airs, broken by vociferations of horrible sentences she had heard.  Her pretty face was mottled with purple patches.  She mixed up the reminiscences of her pure childhood with those of these ten days of infamy.  Katt sat weeping; Corentin paced the room, stopping now and again to gaze at Lydie.