However, the marquis was losing ground; the horse he had taken was
the worst in the troop, and he had pressed it as hard as it could go.
Turning in the saddle, he saw the soldiers half a musket-shot off; he
urged his horse more and more, tearing his sides with his spurs; but
shortly the beast, completely winded, foundered; the marquis rolled with
it in the dust, but when rolling over he caught hold of the holsters,
which he found to contain pistols; he lay flat by the side of the
horse, as if he had fainted, with a pistol at full cock in his hand. The
sentinel, mounted on a valuable horse, and more than two hundred yards
ahead of his serafile, came up to him. In a moment the marquis, jumping
up before he had time to resist him, shot him through the head; the
horseman fell, the marquis jumped up in his place without even setting
foot in the stirrup, started off at a gallop, and went away like the
wind, leaving fifty yards behind him the non-commissioned officer,
dumbfounded with what had just passed before his eyes.

The main body of the escort galloped up, thinking that he was taken;
and the provost shouted till he was hoarse, "Do not kill him!" But they
found only the sergeant, trying to restore life to his man, whose skull
was shattered, and who lay dead on the spot.

As for the marquis, he was out of sight; for, fearing a fresh pursuit,
he had plunged into the cross roads, along which he rode a good hour
longer at full gallop. When he felt pretty sure of having shaken the
police off his track, and that their bad horses could not overtake him,
he determined to slacken to recruit his horse; he was walking him along
a hollow lane, when he saw a peasant approaching; he asked him the road
to the Bourbonnais, and flung him a crown. The man took the crown and
pointed out the road, but he seemed hardly to know what he was saying,
and stared at the marquis in a strange manner. The marquis shouted