to witness the departure of the happy cavalcade.  The four young men issued from their long confinement, mounted their horses, and took the road to Troyes, accompanied by Mademoiselle Cinq-Cygne.  Michu, with the help of his son and Gothard, closed the entrance to the cellar, and started to return home on foot.  On the way he recollected that he had left the forks and spoons and a silver cup, which the young men had been using, in the cave, and he went back for them alone.  When he reached the edge of the pond he heard voices, and went straight to the entrance of the cave through the brushwood.

“Have you come for your silver?” said Peyrade, showing his big red nose through the branches.

Without knowing why, for at any rate his young masters were safe, Michu felt a sharp agony in all his joints, so keen was the sense of vague, indefinable coming evil which took possession of him; but he went forward at once, and found Corentin on the stairs with a taper in his hand.

“We are not very harsh,” he said to Michu; “we might have seized your ci-devants any day for the last week; but we knew they were reinstated—­You’re a tough fellow to deal with, and you gave us too much trouble not to make us anxious to satisfy our curiosity about this hiding-place of yours.”

“I’d give something,” cried Michu, “to know how and by whom we have been sold.”

“If that puzzles you, old fellow,” said Peyrade, laughing, “look at your horses’ shoes, and you’ll see that you betrayed yourselves.”

“Well, there need be no rancor!” said Corentin, whistling for the captain of gendarmerie and their horses.

“So that rascally Parisian blacksmith who shoed the horses in the English fashion and left Cinq-Cygne only the other day was their spy!” thought Michu.  “They must have followed our tracks when the ground was damp.  Well, we’re quits now!”

Michu consoled himself by thinking that the discovery was of no consequence, as the young men were now safe, Frenchmen once more, and at liberty.  Yet his first presentiment was a true one.  The police, like the Jesuits, have the one virtue of never abandoning their friends or their enemies.

Old d’Hauteserre returned from Paris and was more than surprised not to be the first to bring the news.  Durieu prepared a succulent dinner, the servants donned their best clothes, and the household impatiently awaited the exiles, who arrived about four o’clock, happy,—­and yet humiliated, for they found they were to be under police surveillance for two years, obliged to present themselves at the prefecture every month and ordered to remain in the commune of Cinq-Cygne during the said two years.  “I’ll send you the papers for signature,” the prefect said to them.  “Then, in the course of a few months, you can ask to be relieved of these conditions, which are imposed on all of Pichegru’s accomplices.  I will back your request.”

These restrictions, fairly deserved, rather dispirited the young men, but Laurence laughed at them.