"Monsieur le maire can tell you that." "Everybody knows she has her freaks," remarked Catherine; "she looked at the sky before she went to bed, and I think the glitter of your bayonets in the moonlight puzzled her.

She told me she wanted to know if there was going to be another revolution." "When did she go ?" asked Peyrade.
"When she saw your guns." "Which road did she take ?" "I don't know." "There's another horse missing," said Corentin.
"The gendarmes--took it--away from me," said Gothard.
"Where were you going ?" said one of them.
"I was--following--my mistress to the farm," sobbed the boy.
The gendarme looked towards Corentin as if expecting an order.

But Gothard's speech was evidently so true and yet so false, so perfectly innocent and so artful that the two Parisians again looked at each other as if to echo Peyrade's former words: "They are not ninnies." Monsieur d'Hauteserre seemed incapable of a word; the mayor was bewildered; the mother, imbecile from maternal fears, was putting questions to the police agents that were idiotically innocent; the servants had been roused from their sleep.

Judging by these trifling signs, and these diverse characters, Corentin came to the conclusion that his only real adversary was Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne.

Shrewd and dexterous as the police may be, they are always under certain disadvantages.