ny rate preferable to
imprisonment."

Pierre sadly waved his hand. "Yes, of course, I must warn him. But what a
painful task it is!"

Guillaume made no rejoinder, for at that very moment, in that remote,
deserted nook, where they could fancy themselves at the world's end, a
most extraordinary spectacle was presented to their view. Something or
rather someone leapt out of a thicket and bounded past them. It was
assuredly a man, but one who was so unrecognisable, so miry, so woeful
and so frightful, that he might have been taken for an animal, a boar
that hounds had tracked and forced from his retreat. On seeing the
rivulet, he hesitated for a moment, and then followed its course. But,
all at once, as a sound of footsteps and panting breath drew nearer, he
sprang into the water, which reached his thighs, bounded on to the
further bank, and vanished from sight behind a clump of pines. A moment
afterwards some keepers and policemen rushed by, skirting the rivulet,
and in their turn disappearing. It was a man hunt that had gone past, a
fierce, secret hunt with no display of scarlet or blast of horns athwart
the soft, sprouting foliage.

"Some rascal or other," muttered Pierre. "Ah! the wretched fellow!"

Guillaume made a gesture of discouragement. "Gendarmes and prison!" said
he. "They still constitute society's only schooling system!"

Meantime the man was still running on, farther and farther away.

When, on the previous night, Salvat had suddenly escaped from the
detectives by bounding into the Bois de Boulogne, it had occurred to him
to slip round to the Dauphine gate and there descend into the deep ditch*
of the city ramparts. He remembered days of enforced idleness which he
had spent there, in nooks where, for his own part, he had never met a
living soul. Nowhere, indeed, could one find more secret places of
retreat, hedged round by thicker bushes, or concealed from view by
loftier herbage. Some corners of the ditch, at certain angles of the
massive bastions, are favourite dens or nests for thieves and lovers.
Salvat, as he made his way through the thickest of the brambles, nettles
and ivy, was lucky enough to find a cavity full of dry leaves, in which
he buried himself to the chin. The rain had already drenched him, and
after slipping down the muddy slope, he had frequently been obliged to
grope his way upon all fours. So those dry leaves proved a boon such as
he had not dared to hope for. They dried him somewha