The door of the garret had just opened abruptly, and allowed a view of three men clad in blue linen blouses, and masked with masks of black paper. The first was thin, and had a long, iron-tipped cudgel; the second, who was a sort of colossus, carried, by the middle of the handle, with the blade downward, a butcher’s poleaxe for slaughtering cattle. The third, a man with thickset shoulders, not so slender as the first, held in his hand an enormous key stolen from the door of some prison.

It appeared that the arrival of these men was what Jondrette had been waiting for. A rapid dialogue ensued between him and the man with the cudgel, the thin one.

“Is everything ready?” said Jondrette.

“Yes,” replied the thin man.

“Where is Montparnasse?”

“The young principal actor stopped to chat with your girl.”

“Which?”