He cried under his breath, with a note of fright, “The devil is in this man!”

I laughed and took off my hat and made the two a bow.

“To your quick advancement in Bordeaux!” I said.

He stared a moment, seemed to hesitate; then, roughly summoning the girl to follow him, strode off through the wood. The moment they were out of sight I sat down again to ponder.

Was it true, then, that these peasants had met Carinne—that they had helped her to a disguise—for what purpose? She must have been in the woods whilst I was there—accursed destiny that kept us apart! At least I must return to them at once and seek her.

I broke into a queer embarrassed fit of laughter.

What self-ordained mission was this? What was my interest in the girl, or how would she not resent, perhaps, the insolence of my interference? She had no claim upon my protection or I upon her favour.

Very well and very well—but I was going to seek her, nevertheless. Such queer little threads of irresponsible adventure pulled me in these days.

But, at first for my hunger. It was a great voice in an empty house. It would not be refused or put off with a feast of sentiment. Eat I must, if it was only of a hunk of sour pease-bread.

Suddenly I thought of that bestial apparition at the wood-skirt. There had been a liquid “yong” in its snarl, as if it could not forbear the action of gluttonous jaws even while they were setting at an intruder. Perhaps the remains of a goat——!

I started running towards the point at which, I believed, I had entered amongst the trees. Very shortly I emerged into the open, and saw the cornfield shimmering violet before me in the dawn. I beat up and down amongst the standing grain, and all in a moment came upon that I sought. A goat it might have been (or a scapegoat bearing the sins of the people) for anything human in its appearance. Yet it was the body of a man—of a great man, too, in his day, I believe—that lay before me in the midst of a trampled crib of stalks, but featureless, half-devoured—a seething abomination.

Now, in the placid aftermath of my fortunes, I can very easily shudder over that thought of the straits to which hunger will drive one. Then, I only know that through all the abhorrence with which I regarded the hideous remains, the sight of an untouched satchel flung upon the ground beside them thrilled me with hope. I stooped, had it in my hands, unbuckled it with shaking fingers. It was full to choking of bread and raisins and a little flask of cognac. Probably the poor wretch had not thought it worth his while to satisfy the needs of an existence he was about to put an end to. For the horn handle of a knife, the blade of which was hidden in the decaying heart of the creature, stood out slackly from a hoop of ribs.

I withdrew into the wood, and without a scruple attacked the provisions. It was a dry and withered feast; yet I had been fastidiously critical of many a service aux repas at Versailles that gave me not a tithe of the pleasure I now enjoyed. And at the last I drank to the white Andromeda whose Perseus I then and there proclaimed myself to be.

CHAPTER VI.
THE HERD OF SWINE.

I was back in the woods of Pierrettes, my precious satchel, still but two-thirds emptied, slung about my shoulders, my clothes wrinkled dry from their sopping in the waters of the Dordogne. All that day of my finding of the food had I lain concealed in the woods; but, with the fall of dusk, I made my way, by a long détour, to the river-bank, and crossed the stream swimming and in safety. And now was I again la Grand’ Bête, seeking to trace in the scent of trodden violets the path by which my phantom Carinne had vanished.

That night I passed, warned by experience, in the branches of a tree. With dawn of the following day I was on foot again, striking northwards by the sun, and stretching over the encumbered miles with all the speed I could accomplish. I had a thought in my breast, and good fortune enabled me to put it to the proof. For, somewhere about four o’clock as I judged, I emerged into a woodland track that I felt convinced was the one made detestable by a dangling body; and sure enough I came of a sudden to the fatal tree, and was aware of a cut slack of rope hanging from a branch thereof, though the corpse itself was removed.

Now, it behoved me to proceed with caution, which I did; yet none so successfully but that I came plump out of the mouth of the green passage upon M. de Lâge himself, and saw and was seen by him in a single moment. Therefore I had nothing for it but to brazen out the situation.

He showed no disturbance at my approach, nor, indeed, did he take any notice of me; but he crept hither and thither, with lack-lustre eyes, gathering nettles. I went up to him, suppressing my repugnance of the miserable creature.

“Is mademoiselle returned?” I said outright.

He stopped in his picking, and leered up at me vaguely. He seemed utterly broken and forlorn.

“She will not return,” he said; and resumed his task. I stood some moments watching him. Suddenly he clasped his hands plaintively together and looked me again in the face.

“Why did she go at all?” he said. “Can monsieur tell me, for I forget?”

He put his fingers aimlessly, like an infant, to his head.

“I had a pride in her. She was beautiful and self-willed. Mon Dieu! but she would make me laugh or tremble, the rogue. Well, she is gone.”

Could it be that his every memory of his villainy was lost with his cherished tankards?

“What a love was mine,” he murmured. “I would have denied her nothing—in reason; and she has deserted me.”

“Monsieur,” I said, “do you remember me?”

“You, you!” he cried angrily—“what do I know or care about this Orson that springs upon me from the green? You need to be shaved and washed, monsieur.”

“Undoubtedly; if monsieur would provide me with the means?”

He gave me a quick inquisitive look.

“You have a queer accent for a patriot. Well, well—it is no concern of mine.”

Again he resumed his task, again to pause in it.

“Do you seek a service? I hear it is the case with many.”

“I seek food and a lodging for the night.”

“Eh! but can you pay for them?”

“In reason—certainly, in reason.”

“So, then?—should Georgette bring a generous basketful—bah!” he cried suddenly, stamping irritably on the ground—“I offer you my poor hospitality, monsieur, and” (the leer came into his eyes again)—“should monsieur feel any scruple, a vail left on the mantelpiece for the servants will doubtless satisfy it.”

But he had no servant left to him, it would seem. When, by-and-by, he ushered me, with apish ceremony, into his house, I found the place desolate and forlorn as we had left it.

“I have reduced my following,” he said, “since my niece withdrew herself from my protection. What does a single bachelor want with an army of locusts to devour him?”

He showed me into a little bare room on the second floor, with nothing worthy of remark in it but an ill-furnished bedstead, and a baneful picture on the wall that I learnt was a portrait of Carinne by herself.

“It is a little of a travesty,” said De Lâge. “She looked in a mirror, and painted as she saw herself therein—crooked, like a stick dipt under water. But she was clever, for all she insisted that this was a faithful likeness.”

I believe there were tears on his face as he left me. What a riddle was the creature! There is a blind spot in every eye, it is said—and the eyes are the windows of the soul.

He had supplied me with soap and water and a razor, and these I found almost as grateful to my wants as the satchel had been. When I was something restored to cleanliness I descended to the corridor below, and, attracted by a sound of movement, entered one of the rooms that opened therefrom.

Within, a young woman was engaged in laying one end of a carved-oak table with a white napkin. She looked round as I advanced, stared, gave a twitter of terror, and, retreating to the wall, put an arm up, with the elbow pointed at me, as if I were something horrible in her sight.

I had a sharp intuition; for this, I saw, was the little aubergiste of the ‘Golden Lion.’

“You think me responsible for the poor rogue’s hanging?” I said.

She whispered “Yes,” with a pitiful attempt to summon her indignation to this ordeal of fear. I went up to her and spoke gently, while she shrunk from me.

“Georgette, my child, it is not so. You must take that on my honour, for I am a gentleman, Georgette, in disguise.”

“In disguise?” she whispered, with trembling lips; but her eyes wondered.

“Truly, little girl; I am a wanderer now, and proscribed because I would not lend myself to thy Michel’s punishment.”

“Oh!” she sobbed, “but it was cruel. And the Republic destroys its own children, m’sieu’.”

“Thy father——?”

“Ah! he, at least, is back, if still under surveillance; otherwise I should not be enabled to come daily to minister to the needs of this poor lonely old man.”

“Now thou art a good soul, thou little aubergiste. And thy ministrations are meat to him, I perceive.”

“Hush, m’sieu’! but if he were to hear? He asks no questions, he accepts all like a child. He would die of shame were he to learn that he owes his dinner to the gratitude of m’sieu’ his father’s dependant.”

“Is he so sensitive? Thou great little Georgette! And mademoiselle—she does not return?”

She shook her head.

“Tell me where she is, child; for I believe you know.”

“Oh!” she murmured, obviously in great distress, “m’sieu’ must not ask me.”

I took her hands and drew her towards me.

“Look in my eyes and tell me what you see there.”

She glanced up scared and entreating.

“But, is it cruelty, false faith, the currish soul of the liar and informer?”

“No, no, m’sieu’.”

“Then is it not, rather, the honour of a gentleman, the chivalry that would help and protect a defenceless woman cast adrift in this fearful land of blood and licence?”

I gave her my title.

“Now,” I said, “you can cast me to the axe with a word. And where is Mademoiselle Carinne, Georgette?”

She still hesitated. I could see the little womanly soul of her tossing on a lake of tears.

“At least,” I said, “she will not return hither?”

“She will never return—oh, monseigneur! she will never return; and it is not for me to say why.”

I released her hands.

“Well,” I said, “I would have helped her and have cared for her, Georgette; but you will not let me.”

She broke forth at once at that, her arms held out and her eyes swimming.

“I will tell you, monseigneur—all that I know; and God forgive me if I do wrong!”

“And me, Georgette, and wither me with His vengeance.”

“I will tell you, monseigneur. That night—that night after the terror, she spent in the woods, and all the next day she hid there, moving towards Coutras. I would go often to the Château to take to M. de Lâge the money for our weekly bill of faggots, and—and for other reasons; and now she watched for me and waylaid me and told me all. Oh, m’sieu’! she was incensed—and it was not for me to judge; but M. de Lâge is a wise man, and perhaps there is a wisdom that makes too little account of the scruples of our sex.”

“She would not return to him? Well!”

“She would beg or starve sooner, she said; and she would begin by asking a little food of me. Oh, m’sieu’, but the sad proud demoiselle! My heart wept to hear her so humble to the peasant girl to whom she had been good and gracious always in the old days of peace.”

“That is well. And where is she?”

“I cannot tell you, m’sieu’. Ah, pardon! She but waited for the night, when I could bring her food—all that would keep and that she could carry—and then she started on foot for the mountains of Gatine.”

“Now, mon Dieu! they must be twenty leagues away.”

“Twenty-five, m’sieu’, by La Roche Chalais and Mareuil. But she would avoid the towns, and journey by way of the woods and the harsh desolate country. Mother of God! but it makes me weep to think of her white face and her tender feet in those frightful solitudes.”

“It is madness!”

“But indeed, m’sieu’. And, though the towns gather all to them and the country is depopulated, there may be savages still left here and there—swineherds, charcoal-burners, to whom that libertine Lacombe——”

“Silence, girl! And you would have denied her a protector!”

“She bound me to silence, m’sieu’, lest her uncle should send in pursuit.”

“It is madness—it is madness. And what does she go to seek in the mountains?”

“Ah! m’sieu’, I know not—unless it is some haven of rest where the footstep of man is never heard.”

“Now, Georgette; will you meet me to-night where you met her, and bring me food—for which I will pay you—and point me out the way that Mademoiselle Carinne took at parting? I have a mind to journey to the mountains, also, and to go by the harsh country and to start in the dark. Will you, Georgette?”

“Pray the good God,” she said, “that it is not all a jeu de l’oie”—and at that moment we heard De Lâge feebly mounting the stairway.

He entered the room and accosted me with a sort of sly courtesy that greatly confounded me. Associations connected with my reappearance, perhaps, had kindled the slow fuse of his memory; but the flame would burn fitfully and in a wrong direction; and, indeed, I think the shock of his loss (of the tankards) had quite unhinged his mind.

“Shall we fall to?” he said. “This is not Paris; yet our good country Grisels can canvass the favour of a hungry man.”

He gave a ridiculous little laugh.

“And what have we here, girl?” he said.

“M’sieu’, it is a pasty of young partridges.”

His palate was not dulled with his wits. It foretasted the delicacy and his eyes moistened. He lingered regretfully over the wedge he cut for me.

“Be generous, monsieur,” he cried, with an enjoying chuckle, “and own that you have been served none better at Véry’s. Oh, but I know my Paris! I was there so late as September of last year, and again, on business connected with my estate, during the month of the king’s trial.”

He blenched over some sudden half-memory; but the sight of Georgette carrying my platter to me restored him to the business of the table.

“I know my Paris!” he cried again. “I have taken kidneys with champagne at La Rapée’s; sheep’s feet at la Buvette du Palais; oysters at Rocher de Cançale. Ho-ho! but does monsieur know the Rocher?”

“Venite ad me omnes qui stomacho laboratis, et ego restaurabo vos!” I said, quoting a well-known inscription over an eating-house.

He gave a sharp little squeak.

“Eh! but monsieur has the right etymology of the restaurateur; he is a man of taste and of delicacy. This poor burgundy” (he clawed up his glass)—“it might have been Clos Vougeot de Tourton if monsieur had not been so stringent in his sequestration.”

He favoured me with a leer—very arch and very anxious. I could only stare. Evidently he took me, in his wandering mind, for some other than that I was. I was to be enlightened in a moment.

It was when Georgette had left the room and we were alone. The falling sunlight came through a curtain of vine-leaves about the window, and reddened his old mad face. He bent forward, looking at me eagerly.

“Hush, monsieur! The plate—the tankards—the christening-cups! You will let me have them back? My God! there was a cross, in niello, of the twelfth century. It will bring you nothing in the markets of the Vandals. Monsieur, monsieur! I accept your terms—hot terms, brave terms for a bold wooer. But you must not seek to carry her with a high hand. She knows herself, and her pride and her beauty. Hush! I can tell you where she lies hidden. She crouches under a rosebush in the garden, and as the petals fall, they have covered and concealed her.”

Now I understood. He was again, in his lost soul, staking Carinne against his forfeited pots. He took me for Lacombe.

I jumped to my feet.

* * * * * * *

And now began my second period of wandering; but under conditions infinitely more trying than the first. Keeping to the dense woods by day, and traversing the highways only by night, I had hitherto escaped that which was to prove the cruellest usurer of my vigour—the merciless blazing sun. Here, as I travelled by desolate broomy wastes; by arid hills, from which any knob of rock projecting was hot as the handle of an oven; by choking woods and endless winding valleys,—I would sometimes ask myself in amazement what could be the nature of the infatuation that for its own sake would elect to endure these sufferings. I had not spoken to the girl. I was not authorised to champion her cause. Strangest of all, the lack of womanly sensitiveness she had displayed under the very ordeal of St Fargeau’s dying groans had not prepossessed me in her favour. Yet, slowly was I making, and would continue to make, my way to these mountains of Limosin, in the dreamy hope of happening upon a self-willed and rather heartless young woman, who—if we were to come together—would probably resent my intrusion as an affront. Truly an eccentric quest.

Well—I was unaccountable to myself, and of no account to others. Maybe that last is the explanation. My world of conventions was dead, and I lived—as I have already said—a posthumous life. Through it, no doubt, I was drawn by shadows—attracted by the unexplainable—blown by any wind of irresponsibility. This anarchy at least opened out strange vistas of romance to the imaginative soul. It is odd to live apart from, and independent of, the voice of duty. That state shall seldom occur; but, when it does, to experience it is to something feel the marvel of dematerialisation.

Depleted of human life; savage in its loneliness; blistered and flaked by the sun, the country through which I travelled was yet beautiful to a degree. Of food—by means of eking out my little supply with chestnuts and wild berries—I had a poor sufficiency; but thirst tortured me often and greatly. I moved slowly, threshing the land, as it were, for traces of an ignis-fatuus that still fled before me in fancy. And I had my frights and perils—one adventure, also; but that I shall not in this connection relate.

Once, high up on the ridge of a valley, I saw a poor wretch, his arms bound behind him, hurrying forward under escort of a guard. It was evening, soft and tranquil. A cluster of mountain-peaks swam in the long distance; the horizon was barred with a grate of glowing clouds. Therethrough, it seemed, the consumed sun had fallen into white ashes of mist; but the cooling furnace of the sky, to the walls of which a single star clung like an unextinguished spark, was yet rosy with heat; and against the rose the hillside and the figures that crowned it were silhouetted in a sharp deep purple. How beautiful and how voiceless! The figure fell, and his scream came down to me like a bat’s cheep as the soldiers prodded him to rise with their bayonets. Then I cursed the Goths that had spoiled me my picture.

Another time, lying concealed in a little hanging copse above a gorge, I heard bleating below me and the rainy patter of feet, and peered forth to see a flock of goats being driven down the valley. They were shepherded by three or four ‘requisition’ men, as they were called—patriot louts whose business it was to beat up the desolated country for those herds of sheep or swine that had run wild for lack of owners. Their unexpected appearance was a little lesson in caution to me, for I had enjoyed so long an immunity from interference as to have grown careless of showing myself in the most exposed districts.

On two occasions only was I troubled by wolves. The first was on a morning of lassitude and fatigue, when water had failed me for many hours. I was resting, on a heath-covered slope, within a rocky cave or lair in the hillside. For long the sky wraiths had been loading cloud upon cloud, till the gathered steam of the earth, finding no outlet, seemed to scald one’s body. Then, in a moment, such a storm crashed down as I had never before experienced. Each slam of thunder amongst the rocks was like a port of hell flung open; the lightning, slashing through the hail, seemed to melt and run in a marrowy-white flood that palpitated as it settled down on the heather. But the hail! the fury of this artillery of ice—its noise, and the frenzy of the Carmagnole it danced! I was fortunate to be under a solid roof; and when at last the north wind, bristling with blades, charged down the valley like the Duke of Saxony’s Horse at Fontenoy, I thought the earth must have slipped its course and swerved into everlasting winter.

Suddenly the mouth of the ressui was blotted by a couple of shaggy forms. They came pelting up—their tails hooked like carriage-brakes to their bellies, their eyes blazing fear—and, seeing me within, jerked to a rigid halt, while the stones drummed on their hides. The next moment, cowed out of all considerations of caste, they had slunk by me and were huddled, my very sinister familiars, at the extreme end of the cave.

Oh, but this was the devil of an embarrassment! I had sat out sermons that stabbed me below the belt at every second lunge; I had had accepted offers of gallantry that I had never made; I had ridiculed the work of an anonymous author to his face. Here, however, was a situation that it seemed beyond my power of finesse to acquit myself of with aplomb. In point of fact, the moment the storm slackened, I slipped out—conscious of the strange fancy that bristles were growing on my thighs—and, descending hurriedly to the valley, climbed a tree. It was only then (so base is human nature) that I waived the pretence that the wolf is a noble animal.

But my second experience was a more finished one. Then I tasted the full flavour of fright, and almost returned the compliment of a feast to my company. I was padding, towards evening, over a woodland lawn, when from a hollow at the foot of a great chestnut-tree a rumbling snarl issuing vibrated on the strings of my sensibilities, and I saw three or four very ugly snouts project themselves from the blackness. I went steadily by and steadily continued my way, which without doubt was the discerning policy to pursue. But impulse will push behind as well as fly before reason, and presently that which affects the nerves of motion did so frantically hustle me at the rear as to set me off running at the top of my speed. Then the folly of my behaviour was made manifest to me, for, glancing over my shoulder as I sped, I saw that no fewer than five fierce brutes were come out of their lair at the sound, and were beginning to slink in my wake.

I gave a yell that would have fetched Charon from the other side of the Styx; my feet seemed to dance on air; I threatened to outstrip my own breath. Still the patter behind me swelled into a race, and I found myself ghastlily petting a thought as to the length of a wolfs eye-tooth and the first feel of it clamped into one’s flesh. Now, of a sudden, the wood opened out, and I saw before me the butt of a decayed tree, and, on its farther side, a little reedy pond shining livid under a rampart of green that hedged off the sunset. At the water I drove, in a lost hope that the pursuit would check itself at its margin, and, in my blind onset, dashed against a branch of the dead tree and fell half stunned into the pool beyond. Still an inspiring consciousness of my peril enabled me to scramble farther, splashing and choking, until I was perhaps twenty yards from the shore; and then, in shallow water, I sat down, my head just above the surface, and caught at my sliding faculties and laughed. Immediately I was myself again, and the secure and wondering spectator of a very Walpurgis dance that was enacting for my benefit on the bank.

The five wolves appeared, indeed, to be skipping in pure amazement, like the mountains of Judæa; but they howled in tribulation, like the gate of Palestina. They leapt and ran hither and thither; they bit at the air, at their flanks, at their feet; they raked their heads with their paws and rolled on the ground in knots. At last I read the riddle in a tiny moted cloud that whirled above them. In dashing against the rotten branch I had, it seemed, upset a hornets’ nest built in the old tooth of the tree, and the garrison had sallied forth to cover my retreat.

Oh, but the braves! I raised a little pæan to them on the spot, but I took care not to shout it. Suddenly the beasts turned tail and went yelling back into the wood. I did not rise at once. I left the victors time to congratulate themselves and to settle down. And at last I was too diffident to pester them with my gratitude, and I waded sheer across the pool (that was nowhere more than three feet deep) and landed on its farther side.

* * * * * * *

One day I happened upon Carinne!

That is the high note of this droning chant of retrospection.

I was walking aimlessly, the hot thirst upon me once more, when I came out from amongst trees into a sort of forest amphitheatre of considerable extent, whose base, like the kick in a bottle, was a round hill, pretty high, and scattered sparsely with chestnut-trees. I climbed the slopes toilfully, and getting a view of things from near the summit, saw that to the north the circumference of green was broken by the gates of a hazy valley. It was as beautiful a place as I had ever chanced on; but its most gladdening corner to me was that whence a little brook looped out of the forest skirt, like a timid child coaxed from its mother’s apron, and pattering a few yards, fled back again to shelter.

Now I would take it all in before I descended, postponing the cool ecstasy like an epicure. I mounted to the top, and, peering between the chestnut trunks down the farther slopes, uttered an exclamation of surprise. A herd of swine was peacefully feeding against the fringe of the wood, and, even as I looked, one of them, a mottled porkling, crashed through a little rug of branches spread upon the ground and vanished into Tartarus. Immediately his dismal screeches rebuked the skies, and, at the sound, a girl came running out of the wood, and, kneeling above the fatal breach, clasped her hands over her eyes and turned away her face—a very Niobe of pigs. Seeing her thus, I descended to her assistance; but, lost in her grief, it seemed, she did not hear me until I was close upon her. Then suddenly she glanced up startled,—and her eyes were the cold eyes of Carinne.

CHAPTER VII.
THE CHEVALIER DU GUET.

The eyes of Mademoiselle de Lâge were a merciless grey; her face was gold-white, like a dying maple-leaf. She wore no cap on her tumbled hair, and a coarse bistre-coloured jupon was her prominent article of attire. I knew her at once, nevertheless, though her cheeks were a little fallen and her under-lids dashed with violet. She stared at me as she knelt; but she made no sign that she was afraid.

“Mademoiselle is in tribulation?”

“You need not speak a swineherd so fair,” she said.

“But I honour pork with all my heart.”

She rose to her feet. She seemed to hesitate. But she never took her eyes off me.

“Whence do you come?” she said, in her soft, deliberate voice.

“From the woods—from the wastes—from anywhere. I am proscribed and in hiding. I am hungry, also,—and mademoiselle will give me to eat?”

“Why do you call me ‘mademoiselle’? Do you not see I am a swineherd?”

The little pig still screeched fitfully underground.

“Oh!” she cried, in sudden anguish. “Kill it, monsieur, if you know the way, and let us dine!”

I was pleased with that “us.”

“I have no technical knowledge,” I said. “But, let us see. It is injured?”

“Mon Dieu! I hope not. I had so longed to taste meat once more, and I had heard of pitfalls. There was a hole in the ground. I covered it over with branches, that one of these might step thereon and tumble in and be killed. But when I heard his cries I was sorry.”

“That was a bold thought for a swineherd. And how would you tell your tale, with one devoured? or get the little pig out of the pit? or skin and dismember and cook it when hauled to the surface?”

“All that I had not considered.”

“But you desired to eat pork? And what would you say now to a pig’s foot à la St Menehould?”

The jest bubbled out of me; I could not withhold it. Her mind was as quick as her speech was measured.

“Ah!” she cried, “but I remember. And you were in Février’s, monsieur?”

“At the table next to yours.”

“That is strange, is it not!”

She gave a little scornful shift to her shoulders.

“It is all nothing in these mad days. The question is, monsieur, if you can put the little beast out of his pain?”

I looked into the pit. Two beady eyes, withdrawn into a fat neck, peered up at me.

“The hole is not six feet deep, mademoiselle. His pain is all upon his nerves.”

She gave a whimper of relief. Then her face fell cold again.

“It follows that we must forego our dinner. Will monsieur release the victim of my gluttony?”

I jumped into the hole—hoisted out the small squeaker—returned to the surface.

“Bon jour, monsieur!” said Carinne.

“You will dismiss me hungry, mademoiselle?”

“What claim have you upon me?”

“The claim of fraternity, citoyenne.”

She uttered a little laugh of high disdain.

“Well, rob me,” she said, “and prove yourself a true Republican.”

“I would steal nothing from you but your favour.”

“It is all bestowed on these animals. Take him you have rescued and make yourself my debtor and go.”

“Mademoiselle, is this to be, when I have spent days—nay, I know not how many—of hunger and thirst and weariness in the desperate pursuit of one to whom I had vowed to offer those services of protection she lacked elsewhere?”

Her pale eyes wondered at me.

“Do you speak of the swineherd, monsieur?” she said.

“I speak of Mademoiselle de Lâge.”

“She is very secure and in good company. And whence comes your knowledge of, or interest in, her?”

“Shall I tell you the story?”

“Nay,” she said, with a sudden swerve to indifference; “but how does it concern me?”

“Your uncle, mademoiselle!”

“I have none that I own.”

I was silent. She looked away from me, tapping a foot on the ground. It was all a fight between her bitterness and her pride. With a woman the first conquers.

“Tell me,” she said in a moment, turning upon me, “do you come from him?”

“I come from him.”

“Commissioned to beg me to return?”

“No, mademoiselle. Nor would I insult you with such a message.”

“I can dispense with your interest in me, sir.”

Again she averted her face. Decidedly she required some knowing. By-and-by she spoke again, without looking round and more gently—

“How does M. de Lâge bear the loss of—the loss of his treasures?”

“He is, I fear, demented by it.”

She gave a bad little laugh.

“One who would sell his honour should at least keep his wits. Well, monsieur, I have nothing with which to reward your service of runner, so——”

“A meal and a drink of water will repay me, mademoiselle.”

“You can help yourself. Do you think I keep a larder in the forest?”

“But you eat?”

“My table is spread under the chestnut-trees and over the bushes. I leave its selection to my friends yonder. Sometimes they will present me with a truffle for feast-days.”

I regarded the proud child with some quaintness of pity. This repelling manner was doubtless a mask over much unhappiness.

“I have still something left in my satchel,” I said. “Will mademoiselle honour me by sharing it?”

The light jumped in her eyes.

“I do not know,” she said. “What is its nature?”

“Only some raisins and a little hard bread.”

“But bread, monsieur! That I have not tasted for long. We will go to the brook-side and sit down.”

“And the herd?”

“They will not wander. When they come to a fruitful ground they stay there till it is stripped.”

She led the way round the hill to the little gushing stream and seated herself on a green stone. I would not even slake my thirst until I had spread my store on her lap. Then I lay down at her feet, like a dog, and waited for the fragments she could spare. She ate with relish, and took little notice of me. But presently she paused, in astonishment at herself.

“I am eating up your dinner!” she cried.

“It gives me more pleasure to watch than to share with you.”

“Oh, fie!” she exclaimed. “But am I not a true swineherd?”

She handed me the satchel.

“It is all yours, mademoiselle.”

“Eat!” she said peremptorily. “I will not touch another mouthful.”

She leaned an elbow on her knee and her chin upon her knuckles while I devoured what remained. Her eyes dreamed into the thronging tree-trunks. I thought the real softness of her soul was beginning to quicken like a February narcissus.

“But how I long for meat!” she said, suddenly.

I laughed.

“If mademoiselle will retain me in her service, I will make shift to provide her with a dish of pork.”

She turned and looked at me.

“Is it true you have sought me out? I have no knowledge of your face.”

“It will not, like mademoiselle’s, impress itself on the imagination. I have seen you, by chance, twice before, mademoiselle, and therefore it follows, in the logic of gallantry, that I am here.”

She drew herself up at that word I was foolish enough to utter.

“I perceive, monsieur, that you hold the licence of your tongue a recommendation to my service. Is this another message with the delivery of which you would not insult me?”

“Nay, mademoiselle, I spoke the common fashion of more trivial times than these; and I ask your pardon. It is to save you from the possibility of insult that I have wandered and starved these many days.”

She looked at me very gravely.

“I foresee no danger in these solitudes. I am sorry, monsieur; but I cannot accept your service.”

She rose to her feet and I to mine.

“Mademoiselle,” I cried, “be wise to reconsider the question! A delicate and high-born lady, solitary and defenceless amongst these barbarous hills! But I myself, on my journey hither, have encountered more than one perilous rogue!”

She shook her head.

“I take it as I find it. Besides, I have always a covert into which I can slip on menace of a storm.”

“But this is madness!”

“By monsieur’s account that is the present condition of our family,” she said, frigidly.

“See, mademoiselle—I ask nothing but that I may remain near you, to help and protect, your guard and your servant in one.”

She made as if to go.

“You fatigue me, monsieur. It is not the part of a gentleman to impose his company where it is not desired. You will not remain by my consent.”

“Then I shall remain nevertheless!” I cried, a little angrily. “I must not allow mademoiselle to constitute herself the victim to a false sentiment.”

She left me without another word, going off to her pigs; and I flung myself down again in a pet by the brookside.

* * * * * * *

All that afternoon and evening I wandered about in the neighbourhood of the little hill. I was hot and angry—after a humorous fashion—with myself rather than with Carinne. If I had chosen to invest my self-imposed knight-errantry with a purely fictitious order of merit, I could hardly blame the girl for declining to recognise its title to respect. At the same time, while I assured myself I detested her, I could not refrain from constantly speculating as to the nature of her present reflections. Was she still haughtily indignant at my insistence, or inclined to secret heart-searchings in the matter of her rather cavalier rejection of my services? Like a child, I wished her, I think, to be a little sorry, a little unaccountably sad over the memory of the stranger who had come and gone like a sunbeam shot through the melancholy of her days. I wished her to have reason to regret her unceremonious treatment of me. I did not wish her to overlook my visit altogether—and this, it would appear, was just what she was doing.

For, when I once, somewhere about the fall of dusk, climbed softly to the top of the hillock to get view of her, perchance, from ambush, I was positively incensed to hear her voice coming up to me in a little placid song or chant that was in itself an earnest of her indifference and serenity. She sat against a tree at the foot of the slope, and all about her, uncouthly dumped on the fallen mast, were a score of drowsy pigs. She sang to them like Circe, while they twitched lazy ears or snapped their little springs of tails; and the sunset poured from the furnace-mouth of the valley and made her pale face glorious.

Now she did her beauty more justice by voice than by brush, though in each art she was supremely artless; but there was a note of nature in the first that was like the winter song of a robin. And presently she trilled a little childish chansonnette of the peasants that touched me because I had some memory of it:—

I lay amongst the branches that night, with the memory of the low, sweet voice and the strange picture in my brain. And, as I tossed, literally, on my timber couch, a weirder fancy would come to me of the elfish swineherd sleeping within her charmed circle of hogs—fearless and secure—mingling her soft expression of rest with their truculent breathings.

I was up (or rather down) early; washed in the brook; breakfasted fastidiously off beech-nuts. Then, quite undecided as to my course of action, I loitered awhile amongst the trees, and finally came round by the hill once more, and dwelt upon a thought to climb it and investigate. But, as I stood in uncertainty, a shrill cry came to my ears. It rang startlingly in that voiceless pit of green, and I hurried at my topmost speed round the base of the mound, and came suddenly upon a sight that met me like a blow.

Two savages, each with an arm of the girl brutally seized, were shouldering the poor swineherd towards the trees. She cried and struggled, disputing every step; the pigs streamed curiously in the wake of the group. There was an obvious ugly inference to be drawn from the sight, and I made no compromise with my discretion. I just rushed through the herd and charged straight at one of the ruffians.

He was aware of me—they both were—before I reached him. They twisted their heads about, and the one I made for dropped his hold of Carinne and jumped to meet my onset, while the other hooted “O-he! bran de lui!” and tightened his grip of the girl. I saw only that my assailant was a powerful coarse bonnet-rouge, little-eyed, hairy as Attila. The next instant I had dived, caught one of his ankles, and given his furious impetus an upward direction. He went over me in a parabola, like a ball sprung from a trap, and I heard his ribs thud on the ground. But I had no time to give him my further attention, for, seeing his comrade’s discomfiture, the second rascal came at me.

And now I was like to pay dearly for my temerity, for, though I was lithe and active enough, I had not that of substance on my bones to withstand the pounding of a couple of enraged and sanguinary giants. The poor Carinne had sunk, for the moment unnerved, upon the ground. I prayed God she had a knife to use on herself for a last resource. No doubt the ruffian I had thrown would take me in the rear in a moment. The other was bearing down upon me like a bullock. Suddenly, when come almost within my reach, he jerked himself to so quick a halt that his heels cut grooves in the mast. I saw his eyes dilate and glare beyond me, and on the instant a single vibrant scream, like the shrill neigh of a horse, rose from the ground at my back. It was the cue for an immediate quarrelling clamour, fierce and gluttonous, such as one hears when a bucket of wash is emptied into a sty; and if it was lifted again, bodiless and inhuman, it might not reach through the uproar.

I had turned to look—and away again in infinite horror. Upon the half-stunned wretch, as he lay prostrate on his back, an old ravening boar of the herd had flung itself in fury, and with one bestial clinch of its teeth and jerk of its powerful neck had torn out the very apple of the man’s throat. And there atop of his victim the huge brute sprawled, tossing its head and squeaking furiously; while the rest of the herd, smitten with the beast-lust, ran hither and thither, approaching, snuffing, retreating, and, through all, never ceasing in their guttural outcry.

Now in a moment came a pause in the tumult, and I read in my opponent’s eyes, as distinctly as though they were mirrors, that the triumphant brute behind me was showing itself alert with consciousness of the living prey that yet offered itself in reversion. I saw in the man’s face amazement resolve itself into sick terror; he slipped back into its sheath the couteau-poignard he had half drawn. “Adieu-va!” I shouted at him, advancing—and on the word he wheeled about and pounded off amongst the trees as if the devil were at his heels.

When I ran to Mademoiselle de Lâge, she was regaining in a dazed manner her feet and her faculties.

“I must lift you—I must help you!” I cried. “Ah! do not look, but come away! My God, what peril, when the beast in man is made manifest to the beast in the beast!”

I put my right arm about her under hers. To touch the very stringy texture of the jupon with my hand was to find my heart queerly lodged in my finger-tips. She came quietly with me a few paces; then suddenly she wrenched herself free, and, turning her back upon me, fumbled in her bosom.

“Monsieur,” she said on a little faint key, from the covert of her hair (Bon Dieu! that admirable low huskiness in her voice that made of her every utterance a caress!),—“monsieur, he was the old brave of my little troop. I called him my Chevalier du Guet. It was inhuman—yes, it was inhuman; but he struck for his lady and rescued her. Wilt thou not be my ambassador to decorate him for a last token of gratitude?”

Heaven! the magnificence of her fancy! She had taken from her shoulders her scapular, together with a little heart of chalcedonyx that hung therefrom. This latter she detached and handed to me.

“Loop it to his ear, if thou darest,” said she.

I went quite gravely to do her bidding. What a farceur of circumstance was I become! But my breast overflowed with deference as I approached the great pig. He had rolled from his victim and stood a little apart, evilly humouring with his chaps a certain recollection. He eyed me with wickedness as I advanced, and his obsequious following, something subsided from their hysteria, seemed awaiting their cue. I would not allow myself a second’s indecision. I walked straight up to him—“Monsieur,” I said, “avec l’égard le plus profond”—and flung the string over his ear.

Alas! the ingrate! As I retreated he threw down his head, dislodged the trinket, smelt at and swallowed it.

The eyes in Carinne’s yet shocked face looked a pale inquiry when I returned to her.

“Mademoiselle,” I said, “the honour would appear entirely to his taste.”

She nodded seriously.

“It is well,” she whispered; “and I hope none will rob him.”

“He shall be turned inside out first,” I said stoutly; and at that she nodded again, and bade me to a hurried retreat.

We may have walked a mile, or even two, in a solemn silence, before my comrade was fain to stop, in the heart of a woodland glen, and throw herself exhausted on a bank. Then she looked up at me, her fatigued eyes struggling yet with defiance.

“Why do you not upbraid me?” she said. “Why do you not say ‘I told you so’?”

“Because it does not occur to me.”

“Ah! you would make a fine virtue of forbearance; you would be the patient ass to my vanity, would you not, monsieur?”

“I would let mademoiselle ride me rough-shod till I fell dead.”

“And so leave me the living monument to your nobility. But it is not generous, monsieur, thus to rebuke me with silence.”

“I did not intend to——”

“And, after all, it was the hog that struck most effectively.”

“And that is conceded, mademoiselle; and the hog is generously decorated.”

She mused up at me rebelliously.

“I do not even know your name.”

“It is Citizen Thibaut.”

“Citizen——” (she made a wry mouth of it). “Then, if I can find the wherewithal to reward your gallantry, citizen, will you leave me to myself?”

“Mademoiselle, if only I could believe none other would impose himself on that sweet duet!”

She shrugged her shoulders fretfully.

“Monsieur, monsieur, you assume a father’s privilege. Has my misfortune placed me beyond the pale of courtesy? or has a swineherd no title to the considerations of decency?”

“Nay, mademoiselle; it is that your beauty and your proud innocence make so many appeals to both.”

My obstinacy seemed a goad to her anger.

“You exaggerate the importance of your service,” she cried. “Either of those great strong men could have crushed you like an old nut——”

She seemed to struggle a moment with herself—without avail.

“For you are very little,” she added.

I felt myself turn pale. I made her a most profound bow.

“I will leave mademoiselle,” I said gravely, “to the only company she can do justice to.”

“My own?” she asked. I did not answer, and I turned from her quivering all through. I had gone but a few paces when her voice came after me.

“Monsieur, I am dying of hunger!”

Mon Dieu! What a speech to grapple at the soul! I hurried hither and thither, plucking her a meal from the earth, from the bushes. My heart bled with a double wound.

Presently I stood before her, stern and silent. Her face, hidden in her hands, was averted from me. Suddenly she looked up.

“The little pod holds the fattest pea,” she said, and burst into tears.

Petite pluie abat grand vent.

She was very sweet and humble to me by-and-by. She made me the amende honorable by calling my heart too great for my body. And at last said she—

“I take you for my knight, monsieur—to honour and protect, to bear with and respect me——” and I kissed her brown hand in allegiance.

CHAPTER VIII.
QUATREMAINS-QUATREPATTES.

“Mademoiselle, what do you weave?”

She sat at the entrance to her sleeping-place—a hole under the radiated roots of an ancient oak-tree. We had happened upon the shelter in our league-long flight. It was one of those burrows—those logettes into which past generations of the hunted and proscribed had sunk like moles. Many of our forests are honeycombed with them. Over the opening to this, once concealed by a cunning mat of weeds and branches, the roots had contrived a more enduring cover. Within, to walls and floor, yet clung the remnants of brushwood with which long ago the den had been lined.

Carinne was deftly busy over a queer contrivance—a sort of fencing mask that she plaited from thin tendrils of a binding-weed.

“Monsieur on his high perch at night will suffer from the mosquitoes?”

“Has mademoiselle reason to think so?”

“As I think I can tell when a little ape carries a nut in his pouch.”

“Alas! but how cynical of romance are the tiny blood-suckers! They fly on a chromatic scale, mademoiselle. Often I try to comfort myself with the fancy that I am listening to the very distant humming of church bells; and then comes a tiny prick, and something seems to rise from my heart to my face, and to blossom thereon. No doubt it is the flowers of fancy budding. And is the weed-bonnet for me?”

“I shall not want it in my burrow.”

This gave me exquisite gratification, which survived the many inconveniences to which I was put by the bonnet falling off at night, and my having to descend to recover it. But it soon appeared that the least whim of this fascinating child was to be my law.

And yet what a dear lawless existence! I do not know what termination to it we foresaw. Sooner or later the cold must drive me from my nightly cradle; sooner or later the good fruits of the earth must wither. In the meantime we were grillon and cigale,—we stored not, neither did we labour; but we chatted, and we wandered, and we drew the marrow of every tender berry, and gnawed the rind of every tough, without making faces.

And we quarrelled—mon Dieu! but how we quarrelled! Scarce a day passed without dispute, and this in the end it was that resolved the situation for us. For truly my comrade was as full of moods and whimsies as the wind—one moment a curious sweet woman; the next, and on the prick of confidence, a pillar of salt. Yet, even as such, she herself was ever the savour to the insults she made me swallow.

By then I was a little awakening, I think, to a consciousness that was half fright, half ecstasy. Let me not misrepresent my meaning. I held the honour of Mademoiselle de Lâge in high reverence; yet (and therefore, also, bien entendu) I could not but acknowledge to myself that in the depth of my heart was sprouting a desire for a more particular understanding between us. This very self-confession at last was like a terrifying surrender of independence—of irresponsibility—of all that sweet store of philosophy I had made it my practice to hive against the winter of old age. I saw my tranquillity yielded to a disturbing sense of duty. I felt my feet and my body stung by a thousand thorns as I turned into the narrow road of self-abnegation. No more for me should gleam the rosy garland and the wine-cup exhaling joy; but rather the olive from the branch should stimulate my palate to caudle, and the priest sanctify my salt of life out of all flavour.

Aïe, Aïe! and what then? Why, I was forgetting that as a lady puts the deduction before the argument, and cultivates her intuitive perceptions by reading the dénoûment of a romance after the first chapter, so she will have decided upon the direction of that last gift of herself while pinning her favours upon the coats of a dozen successive hopefuls. I might humour or tease my fancy over the presumptive flavour of that draught of matrimony, while all the time Mademoiselle de Lâge of Pierrettes held my person and my citizenship in frank contempt. Decidedly I was eating my chicken in the egg.

Still, the very fearless susceptibility of the child, her beauty and her wilfulness, were so many flames to feed that fire of passion that the strange nature of our comradeship had first kindled in my breast. And so always before my mind’s eye I kept, or tried to keep, the picture of the Chevalier Bayard and the Spanish ladies of Brescia.

* * * * * * *

One day, in our wanderings, we came out suddenly upon a track of highroad that, sweeping from us round a foreshore of desolate hills, seemed, like a coast-current, to set some gaunt pines at a little distance swaying as if they were the masts of ships. By then, as I gather, we must have travelled as far north as Chalus, and were come into regions that, by reason of their elevation, were somewhat colder and moister than the sunny slopes we had quitted. Perhaps it was this change of atmosphere that chilled our odd but never too ardent relations one with the other; perhaps it was that Carinne, as I, was at length taking alarm over the ambiguity of our position. In any case we fell out and apart, and so followed some harsh experiences to the pair of us.

Now we backed from the public way in fright, and, concealing ourselves once more amongst the trees, sat down, and were for a long space silent. The interval was a pregnant one to me, inasmuch as I was labouring with a resolve that had been forming for days in my breast. And at last I spoke—

“Carinne, we have been much at cross-purposes of late.”

“Have we, M. Thibaut? But perhaps it is in the order of things.”

“And that is to say that the plebeian Thibaut and the patrician De Lâge cannot meet on a common plane?”

“You must not put words in my mouth.”

“Ah, if I might!”

“What then? It will soothe my ennui to hear.”

“Not for the moment. Tell me, mademoiselle, would you renew this comradeship were we to escape, and meet in the after-time under better conditions of security?”

“Oh, monsieur! and would you have me wander hand in hand with you through the gardens of the Thuilleries? or invite you to sleep upon the tester of my bed? or open my mouth like a young bird at the fruit-stalls, that you might pop in raspberries?”

“Unkind! I would have you meet me by chance; I would see your eyes open to a light of pleasure; I would have you come gladly to me and take my fingers in yours and say: ‘This is he that was my good friend when I needed one.’”

“I will remember. And then all will clap their hands and cry ‘Bravo!’ will they not? and I shall feel a little excitement. ‘Qu’y a-t-il, Jacko!’ I shall say. ‘Show the company some of the pretty tricks you played in the woods.’”

I was silent.

“And are those the words you would put in my mouth, monsieur?” said Carinne.

“I referred to the present,” I answered coldly; “and, as you take it so, I will speak in your person as I would have you speak. ‘Jean-Louis,’ you say, ‘I am, like all sweet women, an agglomerate of truths and inconsistencies; yet I am not, in the midst of my wilfulness, insensible to the suffering my caprice of misunderstanding puts you to; and, in face of the equivocal character of our intercourse, I will forego the blindness that is a privilege of my sex. Speak boldly, then, what lies in your heart.’”

As I spoke in some trepidation, Carinne’s face grew enigmatical with hardness and a little pallor, and she looked steadily away from me.

“I thank you,” she said softly, “for that word ‘equivocal.’ But please to remember, monsieur, that this ‘intercourse’ is none of my seeking.”

“You choose to misapprehend me.”

“Oh! it is not possible,” she cried, turning sharply upon me. “You take advantage of my condescension and of the wicked licence of the times. Have you sought, by this elaborate process, to entrap me into a confession of dependence upon you? Why” (she measured me scornfully with her eyes), “I think I look over and beyond you, monsieur.”

“Now,” I said, stung beyond endurance by her words, “I pronounce you, mademoiselle, the most soulless, as you are the most beautiful, woman I have ever encountered. I thought I loved you with that reverence that would subscribe to the very conditions that Laban imposed upon Jacob. I see I was mistaken, and that I would have bartered my gold for a baser metal. And now, also, I see, mademoiselle, that the callousness you displayed in presence of the murdered Lepelletier, which I had fain fancied was a paralysis of nerve, was due in effect to nothing less vulgar than an unfeeling heart!”

She stared at me in amazement, it seemed. I was for the moment carried quite beyond myself.

“I will leave you,” I cried, “to your better reflections—or, at least, to your better judgment. This Thibaut will walk off the high fever of his presumption, and return presently, your faithful and obedient servant.”

I turned, fuming, upon my heel, and strode off amongst the trees. I had not gone a dozen paces when her voice stayed me. I twisted myself about.

“Do not lift your head so high, monsieur,” she said, “or you will run it against a mushroom and hurt yourself.”

* * * * * * *

Insolent—cruel—fascinating! For what had I indulged this mood of quixotry—for what permitted this intolerable child to gall my sides with her disdain? Would it have been thus had I condescended to drive her coquetry to bay with that toothless dog of my rank? Ah! I believe so; and that only made the sting of her contempt the more poisonous. It was my person that could not suffice; and truly there is no bribe to a woman’s favour like an extra inch of weediness. She is the escapement of the heart; but the reason she will never move till she acquire a sense of proportion. She was designed but to put man out of conceit with himself, and I think she was not formed of his rib but of his spleen. Therefore the tap-root of her nature is grievance, from which her every leaf and flower and knot and canker takes its sustenance of misconstruction. She may bloom very fair and sweet; but then so does the dulcamara, and to taste either is dangerous.

Thinking these thoughts, I postponed my return to the little glade where I had left Carinne. She should believe me gone for good and all, I vowed, and so should she suffer the first pangs of desertion. Then, though she wished to make me feel small, no giant should figure so great in her eyes as the moderate Thibaut.

At last, in the early glow of evening, the unquenchable yearning in my heart would brook no longer delay. Half-shamefaced, half-stubborn, I retraced my steps to the glen that held my all of aggravation and of desire.

She was not there. She never came to it more. For long I would not realise the truth. I waited, and hoped, and often circumambulated the spot where she had rested, hurrying over a greater or less circumference according to my distance from the centre. I called—I entreated—perhaps in the darkness of night I wept. It was all of no avail. She had vanished without leaving a trace, wilfully and resentfully, and had thus decided to reward my long service of devotion.

When—after lingering about the spot for two nights and two days, drugging a dying hope with the philtre of its own brewing—I at length knew myself convicted of despair, a great bitterness awoke in my breast that I should have thus permitted myself to be used and fooled and rejected.

“She is not worthy of this vast of concern!” I cried. “I will forget her, and resume myself, and be again the irresponsible maggot contributing to the decay of a worm-eaten system. To taste disenchantment! After all, that is not to drink the sea!”

But it was to eat of its fruit of ashes; and I was to carry a burden with me that I might not forego. This in my subsequent wanderings made my steps drag heavily, as if always I bore in the breast of my coat the leaden image of an angel. But, nevertheless, I could muster a pride to my aid in moments of a very desperate lassitude of the soul.

* * * * * * *

With the opening of October I was still a solitary “rogue,” ostracised from my herded kind. I had wandered so far north as that I saw Paris (the ultimate goal, I felt, of my weary feet) to swim distinguishable in the misty ken of my mind. Therefrom always seemed to emanate a deadly but dulcet atmosphere, the attraction of which must sooner or later overpower me. Sometimes in the night I could have thought I heard the city’s swarming voices jangling to me down the steeper roads of wind; sometimes the keystone of the Conciergerie would figure to me as the lodestone to all shattered barques tossing helplessly on a shoreless waste. For I was sick to the heart of loneliness; sick of the brute evasion of my race; sick of my perilous immunity from all the burning processes of that frantic drama of my times. And so I trudged ever with my face set to the north, and the hum of the witches’ cauldron, whose broth was compound of all heroism and all savagery, singing phantomly in my ears.

And to this direction yet another consideration induced me. With the approach of chillier weather the wild wood-life of the wilder provinces asserted itself, and assumed a more menacing aspect. The abolition of the game laws had brought about, indeed, an amazing increase in the number of wolves and foxes; and what with these on one side and sans-culottism on the other, I had often latterly felt myself walking between the devil and the deep sea. Then, once upon a time, I was joined by an odd roguish way-fellow, the obliquity of whose moral vision I overlooked for the sake of his company; and through him was my burden of self-dependence a little lightened.

I had sunk asleep one afternoon in a copse neighbouring on the royal village of Cléry. Autumn is all a siesta in that mild and beautiful district. Waking, I felt the sunlight on my eyes like a damp warm sponge; and so with my lids gratefully closed I fell a-musing.

“To think,” I murmured, “that the twang of a beetle’s bowstring at my ear on the old bridge outside Coutras should have been the key-note to all this devil’s dance of mine!”

I thought I heard a faint rustle somewhere at hand—a squirrel or coney. I paid no attention to it, but indulged my mood of introspection. By-and-by a step came towards me, advancing boldly amongst the trees from a distance. It approached, reached, stopped over against me. I opened my eyes as I lay, my arms under my head, and placidly surveyed the new-comer. He stood looking down upon me, his fingers heaped upon the black crutch of his bâton, and when he saw me awake he nodded his head in a lively manner.

“The occasion is opportune,” he said, in a quick, biting voice.

His lower jaw projected, showing a straight row of little even teeth—like palings to keep his speech within bounds. The brightness of his half-seen eyes belied the indolence of their lids. He wore a jacket of sheepskin, wool outwards; and a leathern bag, stuffed with printed broadsides, hung from his shoulder by a length of scarlet tape. On his head was a three-cornered hat, fantastically caught up with ribbons, and his legs and feet were encased respectively in fine black hose and the neat pumps with buckles known as pantoufles de Palais.

“Comment?” said I, without moving.

“The citizen has slept?”

“Most tranquilly.”

“The citizen has dreamt?”

“Without doubt. And he is awake.”

He made a comprehensive gesture with his stick and his hands.

“But I interpret dreams,” said he—“and at one price. I will unravel you the visions of a politician or expound himself to Jack Hodge for the common charge of fifty centimes.”

He bent his head towards me with an affectation of scrutiny.

“I perceive the citizen does not credit me,” he said.

“And so his eyes rebuke his scepticism, interpreter of dreams,” said I; “for thou hast rightly construed their meaning.”

“Ah!” he murmured, raising himself and drawing in his breath. “But I find it simple to convince the most incredulous.”

“You do?”

“Yes,” he cried, clapping his chest; “for know that thou speak’st with Quatremains-Quatrepattes himself!”

He dwelt on the pause that followed; collapsed from it; regarded me, it seemed, in astonishment.

“Thou hast not heard of me?”

“Again the interpreter of dreams justifies himself.”

He looked away from me, in a high manner of abstraction.

“And this is for the sunshine of fame to throw one’s shadow over half the world!” said he.

“Maybe thy fame is at its meridian, citizen, and thy shadow consequently a little fat blot at thy feet?”

He turned to me again.

“Oh yes,” he cried sarcastically. “I am Quatremains-Quatrepattes, and some outside the beaten track know my name, perhaps. But possibly the citizen has never heard even of Jean Cazotte?”