the former companion of his pleasures.

In a few words Henri explained to him the situation.

"My fate is in your hands," he concluded. "Decide it!"

"You are too good a player at this game not to win it," Lenaieff replied,
"and I am not a Paul Landry, to dispute it with you. Here is a letter of
safe-conduct made out in due form; write upon it any name you choose.
As for myself, I regard you absolutely as a Belgian citizen, and I shall
make no report of this occurrence. Only, let me warn you, as a matter of
prudence, you would do well not to linger in this territory, and if you
need money--"

"I thank you!" replied the nobleman, quickly, declining with his
customary proud courtesy. "But I never shall forget the service you have
rendered me!"

A few moments later, the two travellers drove away in a carriage toward
the nearest railway, in order to reenter France by way of Vienna and
Turin.

They passed the Austrian and Italian frontiers without difficulty; but at
the station at Modena a too-zealous detective of the French police,
struck with the Alsatian accent of the orderly, immediately decided that
they were two Prussian spies, and refused to allow them to proceed, since
they could show him no passports.

"Passports!" cried Henri de Prerolles, accompanying his exclamation with
the most Parisian oath that ever had reverberated from the Rue Laffitte