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"Thank God!" he said, "thank God that I have found you. I wanted to hasten to you. We must flee directly all is discovered. Immediate flight alone can save us!" "What is discovered?" asked Toulan. "Speak, Lepitre, what is discovered?" "For God's sake, let us not be standing here on the streets!" ejaculated Lepitre. "They have certainly sent out the constables to arrest us.
On the day when I, ashamed at twenty years of age of my own ignorance, determined to risk all dangers to put an end to it, at the very moment when I was about to run away from Monsieur Lepitre as he got into the coach, a difficult process, for he was as fat as Louis XVIII. and club-footed, well, can you believe it, my mother arrived in a post-chaise!
Wait a moment, and I will tell you how many times Toulan and Lepitre have kept guard the present month." She drew a little memorandum-book from her reticule, which hung by black bands from her brown hairy arm, and turned over the leaves. "There, here it is," she said. "To-day is the 20th of February, and the two men have already kept guard eight times the present month.
At the end of 1814 the Balzac family moved to Paris, as M. de Balzac was put in charge of the Commissariat of the First Division of the Army. Here they took a house in the Rue de Roi-Dore, in the Marais, and Honore continued his studies with M. Lepitre, Rue Saint-Louis, and MM. Sganzer and Benzelin, Rue de Thorigny, in the Marais.
With her I was to dine on Sundays and Thursdays, escorted to the house by either Monsieur or Madame Lepitre, who went out themselves on those days and were to call for me on their way home. Singular amusement for a young lad! My aunt, the Marquise de Listomere, was a great lady, of ceremonious habits, who would never have dreamed of offering me money.
Monsieur Lepitre was either ignorant of the fact or he connived at this arrangement with Doisy, a regular smuggler whom it was the pupils' interest to protect, he being the secret guardian of their pranks, the safe confidant of their late returns and their intermediary for obtaining forbidden books.
"But there's one thing to be thought of about that," said Lepitre, reflectively. "the widow Capet might perhaps promise to smoke, if we would tell her that we would never smoke afterward. But then we should not keep our word, of course." "What! you say we should not keep our word!" said Toulan, in amazement.
At the end of 1814, Monsieur Balzac came to reside in Paris, being placed at the head of the Commissariat of the First Military Division; and Honore's education was continued in the capital, for a while at the establishment of a Monsieur Lepitre, Rue Saint-Louis, and then at another kept by Messieurs Sganzer and Beuzelin, Rue de Thorigny, both being situated in the Marais Quarter, near his father's house.
"And that settles my doubts too," said Lepitre. "I should think two official guards would suffice, for it is plain that she cannot escape. Simon is on the look-out, and it is plain that the she-wolf cannot transform herself into an eagle." "Well said," laughed Simon; "here we are before the door, let's go in and have our fun."
"And then," adds Lepitre to this, "it is so pleasant to see the proud she-wolf and her young ones, and to set them down a little. These people, when they were living in the Tuileries, have turned up their noses at us often enough, and acted as if we were only dust that they must blow away from their exalted presence.
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