The Count of Monte Cristo

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especially the French, they heard the traveller order an apartment, a
dinner, and finally inquire the way to the house of Thomson & French.
The result was that when the new-comer left the hotel with the cicerone,
a man detached himself from the rest of the idlers, and without having
been seen by the traveller, and appearing to excite no attention from
the guide, followed the stranger with as much skill as a Parisian police
agent would have used.

The Frenchman had been so impatient to reach the house of Thomson &
French that he would not wait for the horses to be harnessed, but left
word for the carriage to overtake him on the road, or to wait for him
at the bankers' door. He reached it before the carriage arrived. The
Frenchman entered, leaving in the anteroom his guide, who immediately
entered into conversation with two or three of the industrious idlers
who are always to be found in Rome at the doors of banking-houses,
churches, museums, or theatres. With the Frenchman, the man who had
followed him entered too; the Frenchman knocked at the inner door, and