Shall I look to the Duchess to assist me?
Will not the finger of suspicion be pointed at her?
Shall she say to her gardener when all Paris is hunting for you, 'Mind that you do not meddle with the piece of land at the end of the garden.'" The thought of the anonymous letter crossed Norbert's mind, and he remembered that the writer of it must be acquainted with the coming of George de Croisenois.

"What do you propose then ?" asked he.
"Merely that each of us, without stating the grounds of our quarrel, write down the conditions and sign our names as having accepted them." "I agree; but use dispatch." The two men, after the conditions had been described, wrote two letters, dated from a foreign country, and the survivor of the combat was to post his dead adversary's letter, which would not fail to stop any search after the vanished man.

When this talk was concluded, Norbert rose to his feet.
"One word in conclusion," said he: "a soldier is leading the horse on which I rode here up and down in the Place des Invalides.

If you kill me, go and take the horse from the man, giving him the twenty francs I promised him." "I will." "Now let us go down." They left the room together.

Norbert was stepping aside to permit Croisenois to descend the stairs first, when he felt his coat gently pulled, and, turning round, saw that the Duchess, too weak to rise to her feet, had crawled to him on her knees.