"'We know him,' said the other, 'for the greatest young rascal in all Paris. He destroyed a tree of liberty in the Palais Royal, and painted the nose of Equality red in the Jardin des Plantes.'
"'The same, monsieur,' said I, in a whining voice; 'he will come here disguised in a grey wig and spectacles to delude you, M. le Commissaire, and me too, unhappy that I am. Ah, mon Dieu, there he is! there he is! Seize him, in the name of morality and justice, of the République Démocratique et Sociale!'
"The patrol instantly laid violent hands on the person of Doctor Thiebault, who, to do him justice, made a violent resistance, and broke the sergeant's lantern, to the tune of twenty francs, before he was borne off to the Conciergerie, where he passed three days and nights in a horrid vault among thieves and malefactors, before he was brought up for examination, when it was discovered that it was not a young student, but an old professor of the healing art, standing high in the estimation of all Paris, who had been maltreated and carried off by the watch.
"So the whole story came out, and on the fourth day I found myself off en route to join my father's corps of Chasseurs à Cheval, then serving against the Austrians. My good mother shed abundance of tears at my departure; the Abbé Lebrun gave me abundance of good advice and a handful of louis d'or, which I considered of more value, and in a month after I found myself face to face with the white coats in the forest of Frisenheim, on the left bank of the Rhine.
"As a parting gift my dear friend Lisette had given me a holy medal to save me from bullets and so forth; but, diable! it nearly cost me my life, for one of the first balls fired near Oggersheim beat it into my ribs; the ball came out, but the blessed medal stuck fast, and all the skill of our three doctors was required to extract it, so after three months I found myself again in my beloved Paris on sick leave."
CHAPTER XX.
THE GALIOTE OF ST. CLOUD.
"To be generous, guiltless, and of free disposition, is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets. There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail; nor no railing in a known discreet man, though he do nothing but reprove."—Twelfth Night.
"So," resumed Ribeaupierre, "this was the way in which I became one of the 24th Chasseurs à Cheval, in the service of the Republic one and indivisible, as it boasted to be, as well as democratic and social; and how I now find myself a sous-lieutenant, under the Emperor, whom God long preserve!"
"And Lisette?——"