m in his cadaverous eyes that the customs man drew back.

"Quick, then, a little," said the latter in something of an apologetic
tone. The short man as rapidly recovered his self-possession. He leered
in a conciliatory way upon the official and pressed a livre into his
palm. The official passed the box through the gate. The coach proceeded
into the City until it arrived at its heart and stopped at the entrance
of that great and wide bridge, the Pont Neuf, the main artery of Paris,
where most of the passengers alighted. They found themselves engulfed
in a yelling multitude of porters, who scrambled for passengers and
baggage as if they would tear both to pieces, which indeed they had no
great aversion to doing.

The _bourgeois_ singled out a tall man who had mingled in the scrimmage
as if only for his amusement. Cuffing the others aside like puppies with
his long arms, the latter lifted the black box out of the tussle and
started away, followed by its owner. They plunged into that maze of
tall, narrow, medieval streets of older Paris which Meryon loved to
picture before they disappeared in the improvements of Napoleon. They
crossed the Latin Quarter and thence wending eastward, entered finally
the Quarter of St. Marcel, the wretchedest of the city, and came into a
lane named the Street of the Hanged Man; where dilapidated rookeries
leaned across at each other, their upper floors occupied by swarms of
human beings. The _bourgeois_ here stopped alongside his porter and
spoke to him in the tone of an intimate.

"Is it far now, Hache? It is already some distance from the old place."

"Here we are; come in quick," replied Hache. He was a bold-looking,
black-haired man, red-faced, unshaven, and battered with the effects of
brandy-drinking.

They turned into a grimy old-iron shop. A woman sitting in a corner
fixed her eyes upon them like a watch-dog. They stumbled through,
climbed a dark stair, and entered a room where the traveller, without
speaking to a man who lay there on a bench, locked the door, and Hache
dropped the box on the table with a thud, shaking off a cap and bottle
which were on it.

The man on the bench started at the noise, and got up on his elbow, his
eyes opening with an effort.

"Great God, the Admiral!" he exclaimed.

The _bourgeois_ had thrown off his hat, wig, and cloak. He was the
visitor to the cavern of Fontainebleau.

"It is I, Gougeon," he returned, his death's-head face smiling.

Gougeo