cretion with a man of his class, she
immediately despatched the turnkey to offer him the sum of 12,000
francs, half down, if he would consent to promote her interests. Licquet
appeared very grateful, very much honoured, accepted the money, which he
put in the coffers of the prefecture, and the very same day read a
letter in which Mme. de Combray informed her accomplices of the great
news: "We have the little secretary under our thumb."

Ah! what great talks Licquet and the prisoner had, now they had become
friends. From the very first conversation he satisfied himself that she
did not know Mme. Acquet's hiding-place; but the lawyer Lefebre, who
had at last ceased to be dumb, had not concealed the fact that it might
be learned through a laundress at Falaise named Mme. Chauvel, and
Licquet immediately informed Mme. de Combray of this fact and
represented to her, in a friendly manner, the danger in which her
daughter's arrest would involve her, and insinuated that the only hope
of security lay in the escape to England of Mme. Acquet, "on whose head
the government had set a price."

The idea pleased the Marquise; but who would undertake to discover the
fugitive and arrange for her embarcation? Whom dared she trust, in her
desperate situation? Licquet seemed the very one; he, however, excused
himself, saying that a faithful man, carrying a letter from Mme. de
Combray, would do as well, and the Marquise never doubted that her
daughter would blindly follow her advice--supported by a sufficient sum
of money to live abroad while awaiting better days. It remained to find
the faithful man. The Marquise only knew of one, who, quite recently, at
her request, had consented to go and look for the yellow horse, which he
had killed and skinned, and who, she said, had acquitted himself so
cleverly of his mission. She was never tired of praising this worthy
fellow, who only existed, as every one knew, in her own imagination; she
admitted that she did not know him personally, but had corresponded with
him through the medium of the woman Delaitre, who had been placed near
her; but she knew that he was the woman's husband, captain of a boat at
Saint Valery-en-Caux, and, in addition, a relation of poor Raoul
Gaillard, whom the Marquise remembered even in her own troubles.

Licquet listened quite seriously while his victim detailed the history
of this fictitious person whom he himself had invented; he assured her
that the choice was a wise o