In the dead of night loud knocking at the street door was heard, followed by the command to open in the name of the king.
"We can yet save ourselves!" exclaimed surgeon, with a sudden flash of inspiration.
Rushing into the room where the pretended chevalier was lying, he called out-- "The police are coming up! If they discover your sex you are lost, and so am I.Do as I tell you." At a sign from him, La Constantin went down and opened the door.

While the rooms on the first floor were being searched, Perregaud made with a lancet a superficial incision in the chevalier's right arm, which gave very little pain, and bore a close resemblance to a sword-cut.

Surgery and medicine were at that time so inextricably involved, required such apparatus, and bristled with such scientific absurdities, that no astonishment was excited by the extraordinary collection of instruments which loaded the tables and covered the floors below: even the titles of certain treatises which there had been no time to destroy, awoke no suspicion.
Fortunately for the surgeon and his accomplice, they had only one patient--the chevalier--in their house when the descent was made.

When the chevalier's room was reached, the first thing which the officers of the law remarked were the hat, spurred boots, and sword of the patient.
Claude Perregaud hardly looked up as the room was invaded; he only made a sign to those--who came in to be quiet, and went on dressing the wound.

Completely taken in, the officer in command merely asked the name of the patient and the cause of the wound.