We arrived at Fontainebleau, and speedily prepared for the reception of our friends.  On mustering our numbers for the night, three were found missing.  When I enquired for them, the man to whom I spoke, uttered the word “plague,” and fell at my feet in convulsions; he also was infected.  There were hard faces around me; for among my troop were sailors who had crossed the line times unnumbered, soldiers who, in Russia and far America, had suffered famine, cold and danger, and men still sterner-featured, once nightly depredators in our over-grown metropolis; men bred from their cradle to see the whole machine of society at work for their destruction.  I looked round, and saw upon the faces of all horror and despair written in glaring characters.

We passed four days at Fontainebleau.  Several sickened and died, and in the mean time neither Adrian nor any of our friends appeared.  My own troop was in commotion; to reach Switzerland, to plunge into rivers of snow, and to dwell in caves of ice, became the mad desire of all.  Yet we had promised to wait for the Earl; and he came not.  My people demanded to be led forward—­ rebellion, if so we might call what was the mere casting away of straw-formed shackles, appeared manifestly among them.  They would away on the word without a leader.  The only chance of safety, the only hope of preservation from every form of indescribable suffering, was our keeping together.  I told them this; while the most determined among them answered with sullenness, that they could take care of themselves, and replied to my entreaties with scoffs and menaces.

At length, on the fifth day, a messenger arrived from Adrian, bearing letters, which directed us to proceed to Auxerre, and there await his arrival, which would only be deferred for a few days.  Such was the tenor of his public letters.  Those privately delivered to me, detailed at length the difficulties of his situation, and left the arrangement of my future plans to my own discretion.  His account of the state of affairs at Versailles was brief, but the oral communications of his messenger filled up his omissions, and shewed me that perils of the most frightful nature were gathering around him.  At first the re-awakening of the plague had been concealed; but the number of deaths encreasing, the secret was divulged, and the destruction already achieved, was exaggerated by the fears of the survivors.  Some emissaries of the enemy of mankind, the accursed Impostors. were among them instilling their doctrine, that safety and life could only be ensured by submission to their chief; and they succeeded so well, that soon, instead of desiring to proceed to Switzerland, the major part of the multitude, weak-minded women, and dastardly men, desired to return to Paris, and, by ranging themselves under the banners of the so called prophet, and by a cowardly worship of the principle of evil, to purchase respite, as they hoped, from impending death.  The discord and tumult induced by these conflicting