pointed to a little door, placed the light which he had brought with him in a corner of the wall, that the coadjutor might be able to find it on his return, and went down again. Although the key was in the door the coadjutor knocked.

“Come in,” said a voice which he recognized as that of the mendicant, whom he found lying on a kind of truckle bed. He rose on the entrance of the coadjutor, and at that moment ten o’clock struck.

“Well,” said Gondy, “have you kept your word with me?”

“Not exactly,” replied the mendicant.

“How is that?”

“You asked me for five hundred men, did you not? Well, I have ten thousand for you.”