It had been in the office, and the man within the walls! Ay, and not only within the walls, but fresh from a conference with the Sieur d'Albigny, primed with all we need to know, and in doubt by which side he could most profit!" "It was about that you saw him ?" Petitot said slowly, his eyes fixed like gimlets to the other's face.
"It was about that I saw him," Blondel answered.

"And I think in a few hours more I had won him.

But in the street he had some secret word or warning; for when I handed the warrant--against my better sense--to the officers, they, who had never lost sight of him between gate and gate, answered that he had crossed the bridge and left the town an hour before.

Mon Dieu!"-- he struck his two hands together and snapped his teeth--"when I think how foolish I was to be over-ridden, I could--I could say more, Messer Baudichon"-- with a saturnine look--"than I said yesterday!" "At any rate the bird is flown!" Baudichon replied, with sullen temper.
"That is certain! And it was you who were set to catch him!" "But it was not I who scared him," Blondel rejoined.
"I don't know what you would have had of him!" "Oh, I see that plainly enough," said Fabri.

He was an honest man, without prejudice, and long the peace-maker between the two parties.
"I thank you," Blondel replied dryly.