strike an unarmed man;—­prove your courage!” The dragoon, without a reply, wheeled his horse, and rode to another part of the square.  Just at that moment, another insolent trooper pressed his horse against the gentleman who had joined the crowd in the Rue de Burgoigne.  The latter lifted his cane, and was about to chastise the soldier’s insolence, when a man in a blouse and a slouched hat resembling the Mexican sombrero, arrested his arm, and whispered to him, “Do not strike! you are not in America:  France is not as yet the place to resent the insolence of a soldier.”  Irritated at this unexpected interference, the gentleman endeavored to free his arm from the vice-like grasp of the new-comer, while he exclaimed, “Unhand me, sir!  A free American is everywhere a freeman; and these soldiers shall not prevent me from proceeding and aiding the cause of an oppressed people.”  “Say rather a hungry people,” replied the other; and then added with a smile, and in good English, “Has the quiet student of the Juniata been so soon transformed into a fierce revolutionary partisan?  What would Captain Sanker say if he could see you thus turned into a hot-headed insurgent?”

“I have heard that voice before,” replied the stranger.  “Who are you, that you are so familiar with me and my friends?”

“One who will guide and advise you in the storm that is now brewing, which will soon overwhelm this goodly Nineveh, and in its course shake a throne to its foundation.  But this is no place for explanations.  Come—­and on our way I will tell you who I am, and why I have mingled with this people, that know hardly, as yet, what they are about to do.”

While saying this, he drew his companion into the Rue St. Dominique, and disentangled him thus from the crowd, which, now no longer opposed by the dragoons, moved onward towards the Pont de la Concorde.  After they had crossed the Rue de Bac, they found the streets almost deserted, and then the man with the slouched hat turned to his companion and said—­

“Has Mr. Filmot already forgotten the pic-nic on the banks of the Juniata, and the stranger guest whom he was good enough to invite to his house?”

Mr. Filmot, for it was he whom we found just now about to take an active part in the insurrection of the Parisian people, examined the features of his interlocutor closely and rather distrustfully, and finally exclaimed—­“It cannot be that I see M. Develour in Paris and in this strange disguise? for only yesterday I received a letter from Mr. Karsh, in which he informs me that his friend is even now a sojourner at the court of the Emperor of Austria.”

“That letter was dated more than a month ago,” replied Mr. Develour.  “I left the Prater city in the beginning of last month, and, it appears, have arrived just in time to prevent Mr. Filmot from committing a very imprudent act, which, by the way, you will recollect, was predicted to you in the magic mirror.  Had you asked my advice before you left your native land to pursue your studies in the modern Nineveh, I would have counseled you to wait for a more propitious season.  But, as soon as I heard of your presence in the city, I determined to watch over you and to warn you, if your enthusiasm should lead you to take too active a part in the deadly strife that awaits us here.”