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The Frenchmen were out of luck: the coachman valued patriotism over currency. He urged on the horses and, with a sharp tug on the reins, sent the poor animals, together with the equipage, off the cliff, while he himself managed at the last minute to leap out on the side of the road.

Upon inspection of the bodies, besides money and arms, a map was discovered on which a house on Novoselsk Street was marked with a cross, and two words were written in French: «Yosif Ravelli.»

For the Odessa police, it was no trouble at all to search out the house marked on the map and arrest the French spy.

At the police station, where poor Yosif was held for several days, he argued in vain that he had nothing to do with the scouts and had absolutely no idea why his good name was mentioned in their papers.

Convinced of the futility of trying to make sense of the case, they let him go, under police surveillance; meanwhile, the occurrence was mentioned in a secret dispatch to Petersburg-an appendix to a report from the Governor-general addressed the Tsar.