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398 the voices of two persons who were speaking in his room with utmost freedom.

He recognised the postmaster armed with a dark lantern. The light was turned on the carriage-seat which Julien had had taken up into his room. Beside the postmaster was a man who was calmly searching the open seat. Julien could see nothing except the sleeves of his coat which were black and very tight.

"It's a cassock," he said to himself and he softly seized the little pistol which he had placed under his pillow.

"Don't be frightened of his waking up, curé," said the postmaster, "the wine that has been served him was the stuff prepared by yourself."

"I can't find any trace of papers," answered the cure. "A lot of linen and essences, pommades, and vanities. It's a young man of the world on pleasure bent. The other one who effects an Italian accent is more likely to be the emissary."

The men approached Julien to search the pockets of his travelling coat. He felt very tempted to kill them for thieves. Nothing could be safer in its consequences. He was very desirous of doing so … "I should only be a fool," he said to himself, "I should compromise my mission." "He is not a diplomatist," said the priest after searching his coat. He went away and did well to do so.

"It will be a bad business for him," Julien was saying to himself, "if he touches me in my bed. He may have quite well come to stab me, and I won't put up with that."

The curé turned his head, Julien half opened his eyes. He was inordinately astonished, he was the abbé Castanède. As a matter of fact, although these two persons had made a point of talking in a fairly low voice, he had thought from the first that he recognised one of the voices. Julien was seized with an inordinate desire to purge the earth of one of its most cowardly villains; "But my mission," he said to himself.

The curé and his acolyte went out. A quarter of an hour afterwards Julien pretended to have just woken up. He called out and woke up the whole house.

"I am poisoned," he exclaimed, "I am suffering horribly!" He wanted an excuse to go to Geronimo's help. He found him half suffocated by the laudanum that had been contained in the wine.