He cringed low, wondering what he had done amiss.
"I know your face," Blondel said, fixing him with a penetrating look.
"Do you not lodge, my lad, in a house in the Corraterie?
Near the Porte Tertasse ?" "Yes, Messer Syndic," Louis answered, overpowered by the honour of the great man's address, and still wondering what evil was in store for him.
"The Mere Royaume's ?" "Yes, Messer Syndic." "Then you can do me--or rather"-- with an expression of growing severity--"you can do the State a service.

Step this way, and listen to me, young man!" And his asperity increased by the fear that he was taking an unwise step, he told the youth, in curt stiff sentences, such facts as he thought necessary.
The young student listened thunderstruck, his mouth open, and an expression of fatuous alarm on his face.

"Letters ?" he muttered, when the Syndic had come to a certain point in the story he had decided to tell.
"Yes, papers of importance to the State," the Syndic replied weightily, "of which it is necessary that possession should be taken as quietly as possible." "And they are----" "They are in the steel box chained to the wall of his apartment.

Be it your task, young man, to bring the box and the letters unread and untouched to me.

Opportunities of securing them in Messer Basterga's absence cannot but occur," he continued more benignly.