But though I slept, I did not rest.  My fever, or my lassitude, or probably some presentiment of the troubled career into which I was to be plunged, made “tired nature’s sweet restorer” a stepmother to me.  I can never endure hearing the dreams of others, and thus I cannot suffer myself to inflict them on my hearers; but on that night, Queen Mab, like Jehu, drove her horses furiously.  Every possible kind of disappointment, vexation, and difficulty; every conceivable shape of things, past and present, rushed through my brain; and all pale, fierce, disastrous, and melancholy.  I was beckoned along dim shades by shapeless phantoms; I was trampled in battle; I was brought before a tribunal; I was on board a ship which blew up, and was flung strangling down an infinite depth in a midnight ocean.  But this exceeded the privilege even of dreams.  I made one desperate effort to rise, and awoke with a bound on the floor.  There I found a real obstacle—­a ruffian in a red cap.  One strong hand was on my throat; and by the glimmer of the dying lantern, which hung from the roof, I saw the glitter of a pistol-barrel in the other.  “Surrender in the name of the Republic!” were the words which told me my fate.  Four or five wearers of the same ominous emblem, with sabres and pistols, were round me at the moment, and after a brief struggle I was secured.  Cries were now heard outside the door, and a wounded gendarme was carried in, borne in the arms of his comrades.  From their confused clamour, I could merely ascertain that the gendarmes who had escaped in the original melee, had obtained assistance, and returned on their steps.  The farm-house had been surrounded, and the Marquis was indebted only to the vigilance of his peasantry for a second escape with his daughter.  The gardes-de-chasse had kept the gendarmes at bay until their retreat was secure; and the post-chaise which had brought M. Gilet and his coadjutors, was, by this time, some leagues off, at full speed, beyond the fangs of Republicanism.

This at least was comfort, though I was left behind.  But it was clear that the gallant old noble was blameless in the matter, and that nothing was to be blamed but my habitual ill luck. “En route for Paris,” was the last order which I heard; and with a gendarme, in the strange kind of post-waggon which was rolled out from the farmer’s stable, I was dispatched, before daybreak, on my startling journey.

I found my gendarme a facetious fellow; though his merriment might not be well adapted to cheer his prisoner.  He whistled, he sang, he screamed, he stamped, to get rid of the ennui of travelling with so silent a companion.  He told stories of his own prowess; libeled M. Gilet, who had got him beaten on this service in the first instance, and who seemed to be in the worst possible odour with man and woman; and abused all, mayors, deputy-mayors, and authorities, with the tongue of a leveler.  But my facetious friend had his especial chagrins.