"Well, when you have found out all that, come and tell me; but remember,
not a word about my being here. If any one asks about me, say that they
had a letter from me yesterday, and that I was in Paris with the First
Consul."

"That's understood."

Michel departed. Roland went to bed and to sleep, leaving Jacques to
guard the building.

When Roland awoke Michel had returned. He had found out all that his
master desired to know. The horseman who had arrived in the night was
to leave the next morning, and on the travellers' register, which
every innkeeper was obliged by law to keep in those days, was entered:
"Saturday, 30th Pluviose, _ten at night_; the citizen Valensolle, from
Lyons going to Geneva." Thus the alibi was prepared; for the register
would prove that the citizen Valensolle had arrived at ten o'clock, and
it was impossible that he could have assisted in robbing the mail-coach
near the Maison-Blanche at half-past eight and yet have reached the
Hotel de la Belle-Alliance at ten.

But what impressed Roland the most was that the man he had followed
through the night, and whose name and retreat he had just discovered,
was none other than the second of Alfred de Barjols, whom he himself
had killed in a duel near the fountain of Vaucluse; and that that second
was, in all probability, the man who had played the part of ghost at the
Chartreuse of Seillon.

So, then, the Companions of Jehu were not mere thieves, but, on the
contrary, as rumor said, gentlemen of good family, who, while the noble
Bretons were laying down their lives for the royalist cause in the West,
were, here in the East, braving the scaffold to send to the combatants
the money they took from the government.

CHAPTER XLVI. AN INSPIRATION

We have seen that during the pursuit of the preceding night Roland could
have arrested one or two of the men he was pursuing. He could now do
the same with M. de Valensolle, who was probably, like Roland himself,
taking a day's rest after a night of great fatigue.

To do it he had only to write a line to the captain of gendarmes, or to
the colonel of dragoons, who had assisted him during that ineffectual
search at Seillon. Their honor was concerned in the affair. They could
instantly surprise M. de Valensolle in bed, and at the cost of two
pistol shots--two men killed or wounded--he would be taken.

But M. de Valensolle's arrest would give warning to the rest of the
band, who would instantly put thems