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16 THE ELUSIVE PIMPERNEL

But this was not all. When Arras fell into the hands of the Revolutionary army, and a regular cordon was formed round the town so that not a single Royalist traitor might escape, some three score women and children, twelve priests, the oldaristocrats Chermeuil, Delleville and Galipaux, and many others, managed to pass the barriers and were never recaptured.

Raids were made in the suspected houses: in Paris chiefly, where the escaped prisoners might have found refuge — or, better still, where their helpers and rescuers might still be lurking. Foucquier Tinville, Public Prosecutor, led and conducted these raids, assisted by that bloodthirsty vampire, Merlin. They heard of a house in the Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, where an Englisliman was said to have lodged for two days.

They demanded admittance, and were taken to the rooms where the Englishman had stayed. These were bare and squalid, like hundreds of other rooms in the poorer quarters of Paris. The landlady, toothless and grimy, had not yet tidied up the one where the Englishman had slept; in fact, she did not know he had left for good.

He had paid for his room a week in advance, and came and went as he liked, she explained to Citizen Tinville. She never bothered about him, as he never took a meal in the house, and he was only there twodays. She did not know her lodger was English until the day he left. She thought he was a Frenchman from the South, as he certainly had a peculiar accent when he spoke.

"It was the day of the riots," she continued; "he would go out, and I told him I did not think that the streets would be safe for a foreigner like him: for he always wore such very fine clothes, and I made sure that the starving men and women of Paris would strip them off his back when their tempers were roused. But he only laughed; He gave me a bit of paper and told me that if he did not return I might conclude that