"Am I lost?" he cried; "no, not if I can use more activity than my enemies. My safety is now a mere question of speed."
At this moment he perceived a cab at the top of the Faubourg Poissonnière. The dull driver, smoking his pipe, appeared to be seeking to regain the extremities of the Faubourg Saint-Denis, where, no doubt, he ordinarily stood.
"Ho, friend!" said Benedetto.
"What do you want, sir?" asked the driver.
"Is your horse tired?"
"Tired? oh, yes, tired enough!—he has done nothing the whole of this blessed day! Four wretched fares, and twenty sous over, making in all seven francs, are all that I have earned, and I ought to take ten to the owner."
"Will you add these twenty francs to the seven you have?"
"With pleasure, sir; twenty francs are not to be despised. Tell me what I am to do for this."
"A very easy thing, if your horse be not tired."
"I tell you he will go like the wind; only tell me which way to drive."
"Toward Louvres."
"Ah! I know it!—the land of ratafia."
"Exactly so; I merely wish to overtake one of my friends, with whom I am going to hunt to-morrow at Chapelle-en-Serval. He should have waited for me here with a cab till half-past eleven; it is twelve, and, tired of waiting, he must have gone on."
"It is likely."
"Well, will you try and overtake him?"
"Nothing I should like better."
"If you do not overtake him before we reach Bourget, you shall have twenty francs; if not before Louvres, thirty."
"And if we do overtake him?"
"Forty," said Andrea, after a moment's hesitation, at the end of which he remembered that he might safely promise.
"That will do!" said the man; "get in, and we're off! Prrrrouuu!"
Andrea got into the cab, which passed rapidly through the Faubourg Saint-Denis, along the Faubourg Saint-Martin, crossed the barrier, and threaded its way through the interminable Villette. They never overtook the chimerical friend, yet Andrea frequently inquired of walking passers and at the inns which were not yet closed, for a green cab and bay horse; and as there are a great many cabs to be seen on the road to Belgium, and nine-tenths of them are green, the inquiries increased at every step. Every one had just seen it pass; it was only five hundred, two hundred, one hundred steps in advance; at length they reached
