smooth, moss and mire,” and whose pace was evidently quickened by many a kick and blow of the fusil.  This was a rude march for me, too, with my unhealed wound, and my week’s sojourn in bed; but I was treated, if not with tenderness, without incivility, while my compagnons de voyage were insulted with every contemptuous phrase in a vocabulary at least as rich in those matters as any other in Europe.  At length, after about an hour’s rapid movement, we reached an open ground, and the door of one of the wide, old, staring, yet not uncomfortable farmhouses which are to be found in the northern provinces of France.

Signs of comfort within were visible even at a distance, and the light of a huge wood fire had been seen for the last quarter of an hour gleaming through the woods, and leaving us in doubt whether we were approaching a horde of gipsies, or about to realize the classic scenes of Gil Blas.

But it was only a farm-house after all.  The good dame of the house, with an enormous cap, enormous petticoats, enormous earrings, and all the glaring good-humour of a countenance of domestic plenty and power, came to meet us on the threshold; and her reception of me was ardent, to the very verge of stranglulation.  Nothing could exceed her rapture at the sight of me, or the fierceness of her embraces, except her indignation at the sight of my traveling companions.  Her disgust at the mayor and his deputy—­and certainly after their night trip they were not figures to charm the eye—­was pitched in the highest key of scorn, so as to be surpassed only by the torrent of contempt which her well-practised elocution poured upon the “traitre tailleur.” I really believe, that, if she could have boiled him in the huge soup-kettle which bubbled upon the fire, without spoiling our supper, she would have flung him in upon the spot.  The peasants who had captured us—­bold, tall fellows, well dressed and well armed with cutlass and fusil, in the style of the gardes-de-chasse—­could scarcely be kept from taking them out to the next tree, to make marks of them; and it was probably by my intercession alone that they were consigned to an outer house for the night.  How the scene was to end with me, I knew not; though the jovial visage of my protectress showed me that I was secure.  But the prisoners had no sooner been flung out of the door than I was ushered into an inner room, prepared with somewhat more of attention; where, to my great surprise and delight, the Marquis Lanfranc came forward to shake my hand, and, with a thousand expressions of gratitude, made me known to his daughter.  The adventure was of the simplest order.  The arrest of the Marquis was, of course, known in an instant, and a party of his foresters had immediately determined to take the law into their own hands—­had posted themselves on the road by which his carriage was to pass, and had released him without difficulty.  My release was merely a sequel to the drama.  I had been left