Page:Gaston Leroux--The man with the black feather.djvu/331

Rh de May, where everything passed quietly, and then again in Croix-Rouge Place, they came back here to the Buci Cross-roads. You had drunk your pint, M. Mifroid, and were mounting your Spanish horse, when this remarkable incident took place. The Clerk of Court read very solemnly: 'In the name of the King, through the Lords of Parliament, the said Louis-Dominique Cartouche…' when a voice, cried: 'Present! Here's Cartouche! Who wants Cartouche?'… On the instant the Clerks of Court, archers on foot, and archers on horseback, drummers and trumpeters, the whole procession broke up and fled in every direction…. Yes; there did not remain a single person at the Buci Cross-roads, not a single person except myself and the Spanish horse, after I cried:

"'Here's Cartouche!'

"Phenomenon more curious than all curious phenomena in the depths of the Catacombs!… M. Longuet had no sooner said, 'Here's Cartouche!' than I started to fly from the Buci Cross-roads as fast as my legs could carry me, as if the fear of Cartouche had dwelt in the calves of the police at the Buci Cross-roads for nearly two hundred years!"