“I have all my life,” said he, “been longing to see Paris, and have never been able to stir a step beyond this stupid province.  Yet I have had my chances too.  I was once valet to a German count, and we were on the way to Paris together when the post-chaise was stopped, the baron was arrested as a swindler, and I was charged as his accomplice.  He was sent to the galleys; I got off.  I then had a second chance.  I enlisted in a regiment of dragoons which was to be quartered in Versailles.  But such was my fate, I had no sooner passed the first drill, when we were ordered off to Lorraine to watch old King Stanislaus, the Pole, who lived there like one of his own bears, frozen and fat.  Still I was determined to see Paris.  I asked leave of absence; the adjutant laughed at me, the colonel turned on his heel, and the provost-marshal gave me a week of the black-hole.  But a week is but seven days after all, and on my seeing the parade again—­I—­”

“You deserted?”

“Not quite that,” was the reply.  “I took leave, and, as I had seen enough of the black hole already, I took good care to give the provost-marshal no notice on the subject.  A fortnight’s march brought me within sight of the towers of Notre-Dame.  But as I was resting myself on the roadside, our adjutant, as ill luck would have it, came by in the coupe of the diligence.  He jumped out.  I was seized, given up to the next guard-house, and after fitting me with a pair of fetters, by way of boots, I was ordered to take my passage with a condemned regiment for the West Indies.  There I served ten years; I saw the regiment reduced to a skeleton by short rations and new rum; and returned the tenth representative of fifteen hundred felons.  At last I have a chance; the gendarme of the village was so desperately mauled by the foresters in the attempt to carry you prisoner, that he has been forced to take to his bed, and let me take his place.  The thing is certain now. You will be guillotined, but I shall see Paris.”

Yet what is certain in this most changeful of possible worlds?

  “Fate granted half the prayer,
  The rest the gods dispersed in empty air.”

We had toiled through our long journey, rendered doubly long by the dreariest and deepest roads on earth, and were winding round the spur of Montmartre, when a troop of citizen heroes, coming forth to sweep the country of the retreating Prussians, and whose courage had risen to the boiling point by the news of the retreat, surrounded the carriage.  My Prussian uniform was proof enough for the brains of the patriots; and the quick discovery of Parisian ears, that I had not learned my French in their capital, settled the question of my being a traitor.  The gendarme joined in the charge with his natural volubility; but rather insisted rashly on his right to take his prisoner into Paris on his own behalf.  I saw a cloud gathering on the brow of the chef, a short, stout, and