forward before the mirror—­that mirror never forgotten!—­in all the whirlwind of his rage, and panted for the conquest of “perfidious Albion,” the “traitor” Pitt, and the whole brood of hoary power.  I was too feeble to turn him out of the room, and too contemptuous to reply.  But his overthrow was not the further off.  The old nurse, who, old as she was, still retained some of the sinews and all the irritability of a stout Champenoise peasant, roused by his insults to the aristocracy, one of whom she probably regarded herself, from having lived so long under their roof, watched her opportunity, made a spring at him like a wild-cat, wrested the sabre from his hand, and, grasping the struggling and screaming little functionary in her strong arms, carried him like a child out of the room.

She then returned, and having locked the door to prevent his second inroad, sat down by the side of my couch, and, with the usual passion of women after strong excitement, burst into exclamations and tears.  What I could collect from her broken narrative, was little more than the commonplace of national misery in that fearful time.  She had been a servant in the family of the nobleman whose daughter I had saved from death.  She had been the nurse of the young countess; and all the blessings that sorrow and gratitude ever gathered together, could not be exceeded by the praises which she poured upon my head.  It had been rumoured in the town that I was attacked and killed by a body of cavalry sent to revenge the rout of their comrades.  And the Marquis Lanfranc—­I now first learned the name of my noble entertainer—­had gone forth to look for my remains in the field.  I was found still breathing, and to avoid further danger was carried to this dwelling, a hunting-lodge in the heart of the forest; there I had been attended by the family physician only, and, after a week of insensibility, had given signs of recovery.  The marquis’s humanity had brought evil on himself.  His visits to the lodge had been remarked, and on this very morning he had been arrested, and conveyed with his daughter, in a carriage escorted by gendarmes to the capital.  My detection followed of course; papers found on my person had proved that I was an agent of England; and the officious M. Gilet had spent the morning in exhibiting to the peasantry of the neighbourhood the order of the “Committee of Public Safety,” a name which froze the blood, to take me under his charge, and conduct me forthwith to their tribunal.  I tell all this in my own way; for the dame’s sighs, sobs, and vehement indignation, would have defied all record.