even now, merely to tell this English gentleman and his friends how
groundless would be the conception that the soldiers and nobles of an
unfortunate country made their escape, before they had both suffered and
done a good deal. My condition was probably not more trying than that of
thousands less accustomed to meet difficulties than the officers of
France: and I can assure him, that no country is more capable of a bold
endurance of evils, or a chivalric attachment to a cause."

I gave my full belief to a proposition in which I had already full
faith, and of which the brave and intelligent old man before me was so
stately an example.

"But I must not detain you," said he, "any longer with an adventure
which had not the common merit of a Boulevard spectacle; for it ended in
neither the blowing up of a castle, nor, as you may perceive, the fall
of the principal performer. As the tide rushed up through the works, I,
of course receded, until at length I was caught sight of by the rabble.
They poured down, and were now within a hundred yards of me, while I
could not move. At that moment a strong light flashed along the cavern
from the river, and I discovered for the first time that it too was not
above a hundred yards from me. I had been a good swimmer in early life:
I plunged in, soon reached the stream, and found that the light came
from one of the boats that fish the Loire at night, and which had
accidentally moored in front of my den. I got on board; the fisherman
carried me to the other side; I made my way across the country, reached
one of my garrisons, found the troops, fortunately, indignant at the
treatment which the king's colours had received; marched at the head of
two thousand men by daybreak, and by noon was in the Grande Place of
Nantz; proceeded to try a dozen of the ringleaders of the riot, who had
not been merely rebels, but robbers and murderers; and amid the