would--no, she wouldn't--yes--no. It
gave me gooseflesh, I assure you.--If she spoke, I should have to build
up my life anew, the whole scaffolding was destroyed.--Would the
footman come in time? Yes--no--there he is.--But Beautrelet will unmask
me! Never! He's too much of a flat! Yes, though--no--there, he's done
it--no, he hasn't--yes--he's eyeing me--that's it--he's feeling for his
revolver!--Oh, the delight of it!--Isidore, you're talking too much,
you'll hurt yourself!--Let's have a snooze, shall we?--I'm dying of
sleep.--Good night."

Beautrelet looked at him. He seemed almost asleep already. He slept.

The motor-car, darting through space, rushed toward a horizon that was
constantly reached and as constantly retreated. There was no impression
of towns, villages, fields or forests; simply space, space devoured,
swallowed up.

Beautrelet looked at his traveling companion, for a long time, with
eager curiosity and also with a keen wish to fathom his real character
through the mask that covered it. And he thought of the circumstances
that confined them, like that, together, in the close contact of that
motor car. But, after the excitement and disappointment of the morning,
tired in his turn, he too fell asleep.

When he woke, Lupin was reading. Beautrelet leant over to see the title
of the book. It was the Epistolae ad Lucilium of Seneca the philosopher.

CHAPTER EIGHT

FROM CAESAR TO LUPIN

Dash it all, it took me ten days! Me! Lupin!

You will want ten years, at least!--

These words, uttered by Lupin after leaving the Chateau de Velines, had
no little influence on Beautrelet's conduct.

Though very calm in the main and invariably master of himself, Lupin,
nevertheless, was subject to moments of exaltation, of a more or less
romantic expansiveness, at once theatrical and good-humored, when he
allowed certain admissions to escape him, certain imprudent speeches
which a boy like Beautrelet could easily turn to profit.

Rightly or wrongly, Beautrelet read one of these involuntary admissions
into that phrase. He was entitled to conclude that, if Lupin drew a
comparison between his own efforts and Beautrelet's in pursuit of the
truth about the Hollow Needle, it was because the two of them possessed
identical means of attaining their object, because Lupin had no
elements of success different from those possessed by his adversary.
The chances were alike. Now, with the same chances, the same elements