some three hundred yards behind us, and the balls whistled in our ears.
'To the left!' cried the captain, and we threw ourselves into a sort of
ravine, at the bottom of which ran a rapid stream. Here we halted and
listened, and heard the hussars gallop furiously past on the high-road.

"'If they keep on at that pace, they'll soon be at Grossetto,' said the
captain laughing."

This is the unfortunate musician's first essay in horsemanship, and when,
after twelve hours' march across the country, with his bass strapped upon
his shoulders, he halts at the inn at Chianciano, he is more dead than
alive. He remembers, however, to read Mademoiselle Rina's note. From this,
and a few words which she takes an opportunity of saying to him, he finds
that she is an opera-dancer named Zephyrine, who had had an engagement a
year or two previously at the Marseilles theatre. She had since
transferred herself to the Teatro de la Valle at Rome, where the bandit
captain, Tonino, happening to witness her performance, became enamoured of
her, and laid a plan for carrying her off, which had proved successful.
Her lover, however, Ernest, the same officer of hussars who had been M.
Louet's travelling companion, is in search of her; and, to assist him in
his pursuit, she writes her name, and that of the place they are next
going to, upon the window of each inn they stop at. It was for this
purpose she had secured M. Louet's diamond ring.

If contrast was Dumas' object in writing this volume, he has certainly
been highly successful in carrying out his intention. Most writers would
have contented themselves with composing the female portion of the
brigands' society, of some dark-browed Italian _contadina_, with flashing
eyes and jetty ringlets, a knife in her garter and a mousquetoon in her
brawny fist, and a dozen crucifixes and amulets round her neck. At most,