“How! you arrest me ” cried Pitou, completely astounded.
“Yes, sir; follow me, I beg of you.”
Pitou no longer looked up in the air, but around him, and perceived two police sergeants who were awaiting the orders of the gentleman in black. The two sergeants seemed to him to have sprung up from beneath the ground.
“Let us draw up our report, gentlemen,” said the gentleman in black.
The sergeants tied Pitou’s hands together with a rope, while they took care to secure Doctor Gilbert’s book.
Then they fastened Pitou himself to a ring which was in the wall under the window.
Pitou was about to exclaim against this treatment, but he heard the low voice which had so much influence over him, saying, “Let them do what they please.”
Pitou therefore allowed them to do as they pleased, with a docility which perfectly enchanted the sergeants, and above all the gentleman in black; so that without the slightest mistrust they entered the farm-house, the two sergeants to fetch a table, the gentleman in black to—but this we shall learn by-and-by.
The sergeants and the gentleman in black had scarcely entered the house when the soft voice was again heard.
“Hold up your hands,” said the voice.
Pitou not only held up his hands but his head, and he perceived the pale and terrified face of Catherine; she had a knife in her hand.
“Higher! higher!” said she.
Pitou raised himself on tiptoe. Catherine leaned out of the window, the knife touched the rope, and Pitou recovered the liberty of his hands.
“Take the knife,” said Catherine, ” and in your turn cut the rope which fastens you to the ring.”
It was not necessary to repeat this to Pitou. He cut the cord, and was then completely free.
“And now,” said Catherine, “here is a double louis. You have good legs; make your escape. Go to Paris and acquaint the doctor—”
She could not complete the sentence. The two sergeants reappeared, and the double louis fell at Pitou’s feet.
Pitou quickly snatched it up. The sergeants were on the threshold of the door, where they remained for a moment or two, astonished at seeing the man at liberty, whom so short a time before they had so securely tied up. On seeing them, Pitou’s hair stood on end, and he confusedly remembered the in crinibus angues of the Eumenides.
The two sergeants and Pitou remained for a short time in the position of two pointer dogs and a hare,—motionless, and looking at each other. But as at the slightest movement of the dogs the hare springs off, at the first movement of the sergeants Pitou gave a prodigious bound, and leaped over a high hedge.
The sergeants uttered a cry which made the exempt rush out of the house, carrying a small casket under his arm. The exempt did not lose any time in parleying, but instantly ran after Pitou; the two sergeants imitated his example; but they were not active enough to jump, as he had done, over a hedge three feet and a half in height. They were therefore compelled to go round to a gate.
But when they reached the corner of the hedge, they perceived Pitou five hundred yards off in the plain, and hastening towards the forest, from which he was distant scarcely a quarter of a league, and which he would doubtless reach in some six or seven minutes.
At that moment Pitou turned round and on perceiving the sergeants, who were pursuing him rather from a desire to perform their duty than with the hope of catching him, he redoubled his speed, and soon disappeared in the skirts of the wood.
Pitou ran on at this rate for another quarter of an hour. He could have run two hours had it been necessary, for he had the wind of a stag, as well as its velocity.
But at the end of a quarter of an hour he felt instinctively that he must be out of danger. He stopped, drew breath, and listened; and having assured himself that he had completely distanced his pursuers, he said to himself,—
“It is incredible that so many events can have been crowded into three days;” and he looked alternately at his double louis and his knife.