Florian meditated a flight. One night he pulled down the tile stove which stood at the wall of his cell and formed a part of it, and escaped by the hole thus made in the wall. His escape was just like the crime. This brought him to the corridor, but no farther. It was locked; and to jump out of the window was as much as his life was worth. His eye fell on a broom which stood in a corner. Without hesitation, he opened the window, pressed the end of the broom into the corner formed by the junction of the tower with the side-building, balanced himself on the handle, and slid down to the ground.
The watchman had seen him; but he crossed himself three times and ran up the nearest alley,--for he had beheld the devil himself riding through the air on a broomstick.
Thus Florian was free, Running up the street, he crept into a covered sewer, tore up the earth with his hands, found the money, and ran off through the woods.
During his imprisonment, Crescence's mother had died, and the Red Tailor, forced to yield to one of those general bursts of neighborly feeling which are the relieving features of village life, had allowed his daughter to return to his house.
In the night of Florian's escape she awoke from her sleep in terror. She had dreamed that Florian had called her out to dance, and, do what she would, she could not get her stocking on her foot. Weeping, she sat up in her bed and spoke the prayer for the poor souls in purgatory. Hearing the clock strike four, she arose and did all the housework. Before daybreak she went into the wood to get kindling. Indeed, ever since her misfortune her activity was morbid: she seemed anxious to compensate for the idle life of Florian. Though no thanks rewarded her industry, she had scarcely left a nook or corner of the house not garnered with dry sticks and fir-cones.
At the edge of the wood she found a white button, which she recognised as belonging to Florian's jacket and secreted in her bosom. Looking over the landscape, she said to herself, "My cross is great; and if I were to climb to the top of the highest hill I couldn't look beyond it."
She returned without having gathered any thing. On hearing of Florian's flight, she wept and rejoiced: she wept because she could no longer doubt he was a criminal, and rejoiced to know that he was free.
13.
THE GAUNTLET.
At night Florian built himself a hut of some sheaves in a harvest-field and slept in it.