s usual under such
circumstances, arrived at no practical conclusions. It was only when the
danger was upon them that they recovered their presence of mind. In the
dead of night loud knocking at the street door was heard, followed by
the command to open in the name of the king.

"We can yet save ourselves!" exclaimed surgeon, with a sudden flash of
inspiration.

Rushing into the room where the pretended chevalier was lying, he called
out--

"The police are coming up! If they discover your sex you are lost, and
so am I. Do as I tell you."

At a sign from him, La Constantin went down and opened the door. While
the rooms on the first floor were being searched, Perregaud made with a
lancet a superficial incision in the chevalier's right arm, which gave
very little pain, and bore a close resemblance to a sword-cut. Surgery
and medicine were at that time so inextricably involved, required
such apparatus, and bristled with such scientific absurdities, that no
astonishment was excited by the extraordinary collection of instruments
which loaded the tables and covered the floors below: even the titles
of certain treatises which there had been no time to destroy, awoke no
suspicion.

Fortunately for the surgeon and his accomplice, they had only one
patient--the chevalier--in their house when the descent was made. When
the chevalier's room was reached, the first thing which the officers of
the law remarked were the hat, spurred boots, and sword of the patient.
Claude Perregaud hardly looked up as the room was invaded; he only
made a sign to those--who came in to be quiet, and went on dressing the
wound. Completely taken in, the officer in command merely asked the name
of the patient and the cause of the wound. La Constantin replied that
it' was the young Chevalier de Moranges, nephew of Commander de Jars,
who had had an affair of honour that same night, and being sightly
wounded had been brought thither by his uncle hardly an hour before.
These questions and the apparently trustworthy replies elicited by them
being duly taken down, the uninvited visitors retired, having discovered
nothing to justify their visit.

All might have been well had there been nothing the matter but the wound
on the chevalier's sword-arm. But at the moment when Perregaud gave it
to him the poisonous nostrums employed by La Constantin were already
working in his blood. Violent fever ensued, and in three days the
chevalier was dead. It was his funera