And why, now, should 'Thanase longer be sought? Was there any thing to gain by finding him dead? Not for Bonaventure; he felt, as plainly as though he had seen an angel write the decree, that to Bonaventure Deschamps no kind of profit or advantage under the sun must come by such a way. But was there any thing to be gained in finding that 'Thanase still lived? The police will tell you, as they told Bonaventure, that in these days of steam and steel and yoked lightning a man may get lost and be found again; but that when he stays lost, and is neither dead nor mad, it is because he wants to be lost. So where was to be the gain in finding 'Thanase alive? Oh, much, indeed, to Bonaventure! The star of a new hope shot up into his starless sky when that thought came, and in that star trembled that which he had not all these weary months of search dared see even with fancy's eye,--the image of Zoséphine! This--this! that he had never set out to achieve--this! if he could but stand face to face with evidence that 'Thanase could have reached home and would not.
This thought was making new lines in the young care-struck face, when--
"See here," said a voice one day. Bonaventure's sleeve was caught by the thumb and forefinger of a man to whom, in passing, he had touched his hat. The speaker was a police captain.
"Come with me." They turned and walked, Bonaventure saying not a word. They passed a corner, turned to the right, passed two more, turned to the left,--high brick walls on either side, damp, ill-smelling pavements under foot,--and still strode on in silence. As they turned once more to the right in a dim, narrow way, the captain patted the youth softly on the back, and said:
"Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies."
So Bonaventure asked none. But presently, in one of those dens called sailors' boarding-houses, somewhere down on the water-front near the Mint, he was brought face to face with a stranger whose manner seemed to offer the reverse proposition. Of him the youth asked questions and got answers.
'Thanase Beausoleil still lived, far beyond seas. How? why? If this man spake truly, because here in New Orleans, at the last turn in the long, weary journey that was to have brought the young volunteer home, he had asked and got the aid of this informant to ship--before the mast--for foreign parts. But why? Because his ambition and pride, explained the informant, had outgrown Carancro, and his heart had tired of the diminished memory of the little Zoséphine.