But no time was to be lost, and leaving the escort to wait till my return, I rode up the hill alone, and desired an interview with the officer in command of the division.  Fortunately I found him to be one of my gayest Parisian companions, now transformed into a fierce chevalier, colonel des chasseurs, bronzed like an Arab, and mustached like a tiger.  But his inner man was the same as ever.  I communicated my purpose to him as briefly as possible.  His open brow lowered, and his fingers instinctively began playing with the hilt of his sabre.  And if the rencontre could have been arranged on the old terms of man to man, my gallant friend would have undoubtedly made me the bearer of a message on the spot.  But I had come for other objects, and gradually brought him round; he allowed that “a prisoner was something entitled to respect.”  The “request of his distinguished and valued friend, M. Marston, dear to him by so many charming recollections of Paris, &c., was much more;” and we finally arranged that the general should be conveyed unseen to an apartment in the Chateau, while I did him and his “braves camarades” the honour of sharing their supper.  I gave the most willing consent; a ride of thirty miles had given me the appetite of a hunter.

I was now introduced to a new scene.  The room was filled with muskets and knapsacks piled against the walls, and three-fourths of those who sat down were private soldiers; yet there was scarcely a man who did not wear some knightly decoration, and I heard the noblest names of France everywhere round me.  Thus extremes meet:  the Faubourg St Germains had taken the equality of the new order of things, and the very first attempt to retain an exclusive rank had brought all to the same level.  But it was a generous, a graceful, and a gallant level.  All was good-humour under their privations, and the fearful chances which awaited them were evidently regarded with a feeling which had all the force of physical courage without its roughness.  I was much struck, too, with the remarkable appearance of the military figures round me.  Contrary to our general notions of the foreign noblesse those exhibited some of the finest-looking men whom I had ever seen.  This was perhaps, in a considerable degree, owing to the military life.  In countries where the nobility are destitute of public employment, they naturally degenerate—­become the victims of the diseases of indolence and profligacy, transmit their decrepitude to their descendants, and bequeath dwarfishness and deformity to their name.  But in France, the young noble was destined for soldiership from his cradle.  His education partook of the manly preparations for the soldier’s career.  The discipline of the service, even in peace, taught him some superiority to the effeminate habits of opulence; and a sense of the actual claims of talents, integrity, and determination, gave them all an importance which, whatever might be the follies of an individual, from time to time,