At once the prospect of being snared among armies and cut off from all return to Paris, appalled me as a greater present calamity than being cast out of Mittau.  Mittau could wait for another expedition.

“Very well,” I said.  “Take the road to France.”

We met August rains.  We were bogged.  A bridge broke under us.  We dodged Austrian troops.  It seemed even then a fated thing that a Frenchman should retreat ignominiously from Russia.

There is a devilish antagonism of inanimate and senseless things, begun by discord in ourselves, which works unreasonable torture.  Our return was an abominable journal which I will not recount, and going with it was a mortifying facility for drawing opposing forces.

However, I knew my friend the marquis expected me to return defeated.  He gave me my opportunity as a child is indulged with a dangerous plaything, to teach it caution.

He would be in his chateau of Plessy, cutting off two days’ posting to Paris.  And after the first sharp pangs of chagrin and shame at losing the fortune he had placed in my hands, I looked forward with impatience to our meeting.

“We have nothing, Skenedonk!” I exclaimed the first time there was occasion for money on the road.  “How have you been able to post?  The money and the jewel-case are gone.”

“We have two bags of money and the snuffbox,” said the Oneida.  “I hid them in the post-carriage.”

“But I had the key of the jewel-case.”

“You are a good sleeper,” responded Skenedonk.

I blessed him heartily for his forethought, and he said if he had known I was a fool he would not have told me we carried the jewel-case into Russia.

I dared not let myself think of Madame de Ferrier.  The plan of buying back her estates, which I had nurtured in the bottom of my heart, was now more remote than America.

One bag of coin was spent in Paris, but three remained there with Doctor Chantry.  We had money, though the more valuable treasure stayed in Mittau.

In the sloping hills and green vines of Champagne we were no longer harassed dodging troops, and slept the last night of our posting at Epernay.  Taking the road early next morning, I began to watch for Plessy too soon, without forecasting that I was not to set foot within its walls.

We came within the marquis’ boundaries upon a little goose girl, knitting beside her flock.  Her bright hair was bound with a woolen cap.  Delicious grass, and the shadow of an oak, under which she stood, were not to be resisted, so I sent the carriage on.  She looked open-mouthed after Skenedonk, and bobbed her dutiful, frightened courtesy at me.

The marquis’ peasants were by no means under the influence of the Empire, as I knew from observing the lad whom he had sought among the drowned in the mortuary chapel of the Hotel Dieu, and who was afterwards found in a remote wine shop seeing sights.  The goose girl dared not speak to me unless I required it of her, and the unusual notice was an honor she would have avoided.