."

The two young men bowed with perfect courtesy, Roland re-entered the
Luxembourg, and Morgan, following the line of shadow projected by the
walls, took one of the little streets to the Place Saint-Sulpice.

It is he whom we are now to follow.

CHAPTER XXVI. THE BALL OF THE VICTIMS

After taking about a hundred steps Morgan removed his mask. He ran more
risk of being noticed in the streets of Paris as a masked man than with
uncovered face.

When he reached the Rue Taranne he knocked at the door of a small
furnished lodging-house at the corner of that street and the Rue du
Dragon, took a candlestick from a table, a key numbered 12 from a
nail, and climbed the stairs without exciting other attention than a
well-known lodger would returning home. The clock was striking ten as he
closed the door of his room. He listened attentively to the strokes, the
light of his candle not reaching as far as the chimney-piece. He counted
ten.

"Good!" he said to himself; "I shall not be too late."

In spite of this probability, Morgan seemed determined to lose no time.
He passed a bit of tinder-paper under the heater on the hearth, which
caught fire instantly. He lighted four wax-candles, all there were in
the room, placed two on the mantel-shelf and two on a bureau opposite,
and spread upon the bed a complete dress of the Incroyable of the very
latest fashion. It consisted of a short coat, cut square across the
front and long behind, of a soft shade between a pale-green and a
pearl-gray; a waistcoat of buff plush, with eighteen mother-of-pearl
buttons; an immense white cravat of the finest cambric; light trousers
of white cashmere, decorated with a knot of ribbon where they buttoned
above the calves, and pearl-gray silk stockings, striped transversely
with the same green as the coat, and delicate pumps with diamond
buckles. The inevitable eye-glass was not forgotten. As for the hat, it
was precisely the same in which Carle Vernet painted his dandy of the
Directory.

When these things were ready, Morgan waited with seeming impatience. At
the end of five minutes he rang the bell. A waiter appeared.

"Hasn't the wig-maker come?" asked Morgan.

In those days wig-makers were not yet called hair-dressers.

"Yes, citizen," replied the waiter, "he came, but you had not yet
returned, so he left word that he'd come back. Some one knocked just as
you rang; it's probably--"

"Here, here," cried a voice on the stairs.

"Ah! b