herbs and vegetable beds, with their long bare stalks, concealed their
movements; the man was still on the ladder. "_La bonne Esperance_" said
the soldier through his ground teeth, muttering some old watchword of the
wars, and (while Cesarini, below, held the ladder steadfast) he rushed up
the steps, and with a sudden effort of his muscular arm, hurled the
gardener to the ground. The man, surprised, half stunned, and wholly
terrified, did not attempt to wrestle with the two madmen, he uttered
loud cries for help! But help came too late; these strange and fearful
comrades had already scaled the wall, had dropped on the other side, and
were fast making across the dusky fields to the neighbouring forest.



CHAPTER V.

HOPES and Fears
Start up alarmed, and o'er life's narrow verge
Look down: on what?--a fathomless abyss!--YOUNG.

MIDNIGHT--and intense frost! There they were--houseless and
breadless--the two fugitives, in the heart of that beautiful forest which
has rung to the horns of many a royal chase. The soldier, whose youth
had been inured to hardships, and to the conquests which our mother-wit
wrings from the stepdame Nature, had made a fire by the friction of two
pieces of dry wood; such wood was hard to be found, for the snow whitened
the level ground, and lay deep in the hollows; and when it was
discovered, the fuel was slow to burn; however, the fire blazed red at
last. On a little mound, shaded by a semicircle of huge trees, sat the
Outlaws of Human Reason. They cowered over the blaze opposite to each
other, and the glare crimsoned their features. And each in his heart