uring the
succeeding night.

The captain had heard by common rumor that Madame de Montrevel's guest
had been stabbed; but as no one had lodged a complaint, he did not think
he had the right to investigate circumstances which it seemed to
him Roland wished to keep in the dark. In those troublous days more
indulgence was shown to officers of the army than they might have
received at other times.

As for Roland, he had said nothing because he wished to reserve for
himself the satisfaction of pursuing the assassins and sham ghosts of
the Chartreuse when the time came. He now arrived with full power to put
that design into execution, firmly resolved not to return to the
First Consul until it was accomplished. Besides, it was one of those
adventures he was always seeking, at once dangerous and picturesque, an
opportunity of pitting his life against men who cared little for their
own, and probably less for his. Roland had no conception of Morgan's
safe-guard which had twice protected him from danger--once on the night
he had watched at the Chartreuse, and again when he had fought against
Cadoudal. How could he know that a simple cross was drawn above his
name, and that this symbol of redemption guaranteed his safety from one
end of France to the other?

For the rest, the first thing to be done was to surround the Chartreuse
of Seillon, and to search thoroughly into its most secret places--a
thing Roland believed himself perfectly competent to do.

The night was now too far advanced to undertake the expedition, and it
was postponed until the one following. In the meantime Roland remained
quietly in hiding in the captain's room at the barracks that no one
might suspect his presence at Bourg nor its cause. The following night
he was to guide the expedition. In the course of the morrow, one of the
gendarmes, who was a tailor, agreed to make him a sergeant's uniform. He
was to pass as a member of the brigade at Sons-le-Saulnier, and, thanks
to the uniform, could direct the search at the Chartreuse without being
recognized.

Everything happened as planned. Roland entered the barracks with the
captain about one o'clock, ascended to the latter's room, where he slept
on a bed on the floor like a man who has just passed two days and two
nights in a post-chaise. The next day he restrained his impatience
by drawing a plan of the Chartreuse of Seillon for the captain's
instruction, with which, even without Roland's help, that worthy